‘Saturday Night Live’: Every One-Season Wonder, From Martin Short to Robert Downey Jr.

‘Saturday Night Live’: Every One-Season Wonder, From Martin Short to Robert Downey Jr.

Over the course of Saturday Night Live‘s history, many memorable castmembers have graced the Studio 8H stage (172 of them, to be exact). But of all the various comedians to be featured on the long-running sketch comedy series, roughly 35 percent have only appeared on the show for a single season. 

By technical terms, that means there have been around 60 one-and-done Saturday Night Live performers, and that list includes a plethora of Hollywood’s beloved writers, actors and comedians. Some previous ensemble members have faded into the background, while others have stood out among the crop, going on to win an Oscar, Grammy and plenty of Emmys and Tonys (meaning the full slate of alumni with one season under their belt, together, have an EGOT).

Some of them were fired. Some of them were better suited on the series as writers. A few of their careers went on to blow up in Hollywood. So without further adieu, her are all of the SNL castmembers who (for one reason or another) only lasted one season.

Aristotle Athari was part of SNL’s 47th installment. After his time on the comedy series, he went on to make appearances in Hacks (in two season three episodes and a singular season four episode) and most recently acted in MEGAN 2.0. 

Peter Aykroyd graced the cast of SNL during season five, where he also served as a writer. The brother of original castmember Dan Aykroyd, Peter died in 2021, and his death was announced during the Nov. 20 episode of the same year. 

Morwenna Banks served on a mere four episodes of season 20 of SNL. She went on to write and act in a number of projects, and she notably voices the role of Mommy Pig in the animated children’s show PeppaPig. 

Beth Call graced SNL during its 17th season. When reflecting on her time as a featured player in conversation with Grantland, Call called the gig “a high-pressure job” that’s full of “stiff competition.” 

“It’s a fun job, but it’s a real job, with office politics and everything!” she added. “But for the most part, it was great. People told me that Lorne liked me, and he was always very nice to me. I liked working for Lorne; I’m forever grateful to him for taking a chance on me.” 

George Coe is from SNL‘s original 1975 season, notably a member ofthe infamous batch of Not Ready for Prime Time Players. After starring in the debut episode, he went on to make additional brief cameos in the show. 

Coe went on to have a sprawling acting career, being featured in projects including Kramer vs. Kramer, The Stepford Wives and Archer. He was additionally nominated for an Oscar in 1969 for his short film, The Dove. Coe died in 2015 following a long illness. 

Billy Crystal was intended to appear on the first episode of SNL in 1975, though he was infamously cut from the cast. Nonetheless, he returned roughly a decade later as an official member of the cast in 1984. While his time with the sketch comedy series was short, Crystal’s career went on an upward trajectory after he left SNL in 1985.  

Crystal’s discography is too long to list, though some of his standouts include his role of Harry Burns in When Harry Met Sally (1989), City Slickers (1991) and Monsters, Inc. (2001), where he voiced Mike Wazowski. He’s received three Grammy noms (the same number of times he’s hosted said ceremony), six Emmys, won a Tony and holds the title for the second-most times a person has hosted the Oscars, having led the awards show nine separate times. 

Crystal is just one example on the lengthy list of one-and-done SNL castmembers who have proved that only gracing a single season of the program doesn’t define one’s career.  

After a one-season run on SNL in the mid-1980s, Joan Cusack kicked off a prominent career as an actress. She was nominated for her first Academy Award in 1988 tied to her role in Working Girl, and she earned her second Oscar nom in 1997 for In & Out. Cusack has also lent her voice to the Toy Story franchise as Jessie. 

The actress earned her single Emmy in 2015 for her work as Sheila Jackson in Shameless. Before taking the title, Cusack was notably nominated for five consecutive years at the Emmys, beginning in 2011. 

Tom Davis was one of the original writers of SNL. He worked on the show alongside his professional partner Al Franken, and Lorne Michaels notably scouted them to write for his sketch comedy show after he saw the duo performing stand-up in Los Angeles. SNL’s fifth season was his only run as a featured player. 

Davis and Franken earned four Emmys together, with three of those stemming from their writing for the series in 1976, 1977 and 1989. His final Emmy came from The Paul Simon Special in 1977. Davis died in 2012 of metastatic tonsil cancer. 

“Tom was one of the writers who created SNL,” Michaels said in a statement following his death. “He was there from the beginning. No one saw things the way that Tom did. He was funny, he was original and he was always there to help no matter the hour. And I always trusted his laugh. I can still kinda hear it.”

Denny Dillon was a castmember during the notorious sixth season of the show, also known as SNL ‘80. She was the first lesbian to be featured on the cast. In a 2020 profile with Vulture, she confirmed that “anyone who was working with me probably knew” she was gay, though she “just wasn’t ever out publicly.” 

“I’ve been out for a long time. Me telling you I’m out, I just wasn’t ever out publicly. I’ve been gay a long, long time. But it wasn’t safe to be out in Hollywood for a long time, in the ’90s,” Dillon explained. “It wasn’t safe. I’m not sure if [Jean Doumanian or Dick Ebersol] would’ve known; it was a different time.”

While Jim Downey’s experience in front of the camera was short-lived at Studio 8H, his time behind it was quite extensive. Downey served as a writer on the show from 1977-80, 1984-98 and 2000-05, and was a head writer for a decade from 1985-95, making him the longest-serving writer in the show’s history.

He also worked as a producer for “Weekend Update” from 1995-97. But it was in 1980 when he became a castmember. A famous sketch he’s seen in is “Mr. Madison,” where he delivers the line, “No one in this room is now dumber.” He also appears in Billy Madison, starring SNL alum Adam Sandler, as the principal, and delivers the harsh yet memorable line: “I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.”

In 1985, after a five-year hiatus, Michaels returned and, instead of sketch comics, hired a crew of young actors, including Robert Downey Jr., Anthony Michael Hall and Joan Cusack. For all his talent, sketch comedy was just not in Downey’s wheelhouse. The dud of the year resulted in nearly the entire cast being let go, Downey among them. He was, of course, meant for bigger things on the big screen.

Downey since went on to lead the Marvel Cinematic Universe, beginning with 2008’s Iron Man. After earning an Oscar nod for best actor in 1993, he won his first Academy Award in 2024 in the supporting actor category for his work in Oppenheimer. He’ll make his long-awaited MCU return (after Iron Man/Tony Stark died in Endgame) in Avengers: Doomsday, where Downey will take on a new role in the superhero series as Doctor Doom.

Christine Ebersole’s first (and only) season on SNL was the same as Dick Ebersol’s — a total coincidence, as are the similarities of their surnames. Ebersole, like Ebersol, was thrown right into the fire, serving as Brian Doyle-Murray’s “Weekend Update” co-anchor. These were, ah, not SNL’s heydays. They were also not Ebersole’s — her best work was saved for a different kind of live stage show, earning Tony Awards for 42nd Street and Grey Gardens.

After a successful audition in the mid-1980s, the man behind some of David Letterman’s best Late Night bits and the cult sitcom Get a Life initially turned down an offer to join SNL. He may have wished he had trusted that instinct, as his 1994–95 run was notoriously difficult. Coming off the cancellation of Get a Life and the box office flop of Cabin Boy, Elliott badly needed a win, but instead found the SNL environment stifling: “It’s a really unhealthy process. You’re doing comedy but you’re competing with your fellow castmembers for airtime.”

In the long run, though, leaving was for the best. Elliott thrived in his own eccentric projects (Eagleheart) and scene-stealing appearances in mainstream hits (There’s Something About Mary, Schitt’s Creek, The Good Wife, Community), channeling his oddball genius far more effectively outside of Studio 8H.

Siobhan Fallon, now Siobhan Fallon Hogan, has had a nice career after her one-and-done SNL season. Though Hogan has mostly worked as a character actress, she has made the most of those opportunities, which include standout roles in Forrest Gump and on Seinfeld. Though Hogan (then Fallon) didn’t stick around long enough to benefit from that early-90s SNL rebuild, her career as a writer and an actress is nothing to stick your nose up at.

Garofalo didn’t even make it a full season at SNL, because holy cow, she hated it. Garofalo says she was badly mistreated by her fellow castmembers and writers. Calling SNL “the most miserable experience of [her] life” and finding many of the sketches to be juvenile, Garofalo said there was a “visceral feeling of bad karma when you [walked] into the writers room.” So yeah, she preferred working with Ben Stiller, another one-and-done SNL player (just five years earlier). Garofalo went on to have a great career on other TV shows, as well as in more than 50 feature films.

An honorable mention among singular season SNL castmembers, Gillis was quickly fired after joining the cast in 2019 when a video resurfaced of him using a racial slur. In total, he was an official cast member for less than a week, though he has since returned as host in 2024.

Gilbert Gottfried on Saturday Night Live was wildly different than the Gilbert Gottfried we know from Beverly Hills Cop, Aladdin and the Problem Child movies — perhaps that’s why he was so briefly a part of the show. You see, Gottfried’s trademark squint and shrill voice are not natural. They’re part of the act, but not part of the act he brought to SNL in just its sixth season.

Right now, you’re probably imagining Gottfried screeching “AFLAC!” Gottfried was the infamous voice of the famous insurance duck, until he tweeted out a series of jokes about the deadly 2011 tsunami in Japan — his act had, uh, evolved quite a bit by then. The notoriously dirty and dangerous comic was the subject of 2017 documentary, Gilbert, which is where many fans were first able to separate the man from the character. He died five years later from recurrent ventricular tachycardia caused by myotonic dystrophy type II, a rare genetic muscular disease that can lead to heart complications.

The SNL tenure of Christopher Guest — the comedic mind behind Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show and other brilliant mockumentary classics — was limited to the notorious 1984-85 season. Both for him and for the show, it was a transitional year: Dick Ebersol had departed, Michaels had yet to return and the eclectic cast included Billy Crystal, Martin Short and Harry Shearer.

Hired as both a performer and a writer, Guest brought his dry, understated style to sketches that leaned toward satire. His forte was subtle character work: oddball intellectuals, offbeat commentators and dry “straight men” opposite broader performers. His cerebral humor sometimes clashed with SNL’s rapid-fire format, but collaborations with Crystal and a handful of sharp parody news pieces stood out.

Guest’s year at Rockefeller Center coincided with his true breakthrough — he had already co-written and starred in This Is Spinal Tap (1984), the film that launched the modern mockumentary. In hindsight, SNL was a brief detour on the way to the improvisational ensemble comedies that defined his career. He has one Primetime Emmy and Grammy under his belt.

An icon of the 1980s Brat Pack and John Hughes’ teen films (The Breakfast Club, Weird Science), Anthony Michael Hall joined SNL in 1985 at just 17, still the youngest male castmember in the show’s history. His lone season coincided with Michaels’ return and an influx of new faces, but Hall was overshadowed by heavyweights like Jon Lovitz, Nora Dunn and Dennis Miller.

Often cast in the same awkward-teen roles that had made him famous in Hollywood, he struggled to land impressions (his Ron Reagan Jr. fell flat) and never quite found his footing. After leaving Studio 8H, Hall pivoted away from teen roles, slowly rebuilding his career with small TV and film parts before scoring later successes, including the lead role in the sci-fi series The Dead Zone (2002-07) and a memorable supporting part in The Dark Knight (2008).

Rich Hall is not one of those one-timers on our list who you almost certainly know from other projects. His comedy career was relatively frontloaded, winning a writing Emmy for David Letterman’s original daytime show and then writing for and performing on Fridays, the Saturday Night Live competitor best known for counting Larry David (Curb Your Enthusiasm, Seinfeld) among its cast. Hall, a stand-up comic who sometimes performed as country music singer Otis Lee Crenshaw, had some successes here and there — and by “there” we mostly mean in the U.K.

During the 2020-21 season, better known as the COVID season of the sketch comedy series, Lauren Holt was a featured player in its cast. One of her most memorable sketches was when she appeared as relationship expert Mackenzie Taylor-Joy in a Valentine’s edition of “Weekend Update” and a Bachelor spoof, which starred Adele. That same season, castmember Beck Bennett also left the show after eight seasons. Since departing, she’s gained acting credits in Barbie, You’re Cordially Invited and Curb Your Enthusiasm, and lent her voice for the animated films Aqua Teen Forever: Plantasm and Pastacolypse.

A hire from the Jean Doumanian era of SNL, Hudson’s short tenure is notable for making her the first Black woman in the cast. She was a featured player in her season, not a full-fledged castmember, and only given small, supporting roles that failed to let her shine. She was fired after 12 episodes after the season debuted to bad reviews and sinking ratings. 

Laura Kightlinger was a featured player on SNL during season 20, and while she didn’t continue on with the series, she went on to appear in several other TV and film projects. She served as a consulting producer and writer on 2 Broke Girls, and served in those same roles on the Emmy Award-winning comedy Will & Grace.

David Koechner, most well known for his roles in The Office and the Anchorman films, was previously a castmember on SNL during the 1995-96 season. Additional notable names that season include Will Ferrell, Tim Meadows, Darrell Hammond, Jim Breuer, Norm MacDonald, Mark McKinney and Cheri Oteri. In 2019, Koechner went on Larry King and recalled how he disagreed with the show pushing “fake talk show parodies,” because he wanted to work on sketches instead. 

Another member of SNL’s infamous sixth season, Matthew Laurance ran as a featured player for 13 episodes in total. He starred in the 1983 musical drama Eddie and the Cruisers, and subsequently reprised his role for the 1989 sequel. Laurance, too, acted in the beloved 1990s teen drama Beverly Hills, 90210 as Mel Silver, the father to Brian Austin Green’s David Silver. 

After Jean Doumanian was fired from SNL in 1981, leading to a series of cast cuts, Gail Matthius was one of the only starting featured players from season six to remain through the end of the season. Of the “intense” time in the show’s history, she told Vulture, “I remember going one by one into Dick Ebersol’s office. It was like thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Charlie [Rocket] came out: He was gone. Gilly [Gottfried] came out: He was gone. It was pretty intense, like Sophie’s Choice.” 

However, she didn’t stick around for season seven, though Matthius has since established a wide-ranging career in voice acting. She’s behind the voice of Tiny Toons’ “Shirley the Loon,” Martha in Bobby’s World and Molly Coddle in Bump in the Night.

The Emmy and Tony winner was a part of the SNL cast at one point — sort of. Metcalf had two brief appearances in the show, one in 1981 when she did a “man on the street” bit and another in 1988, where she was in the sketch “Laurie Has a Story” alongside Catherine O’Hara. The Lady Bird star reflected on the experience in a 2019 Vulture interview.

“It seems like a dream because it was so long ago and it was a whirlwind five days I spent in New York,” Metcalf said. “They put me in a business suit and sent me out on the street with a little mini camera crew. I was so out of my element; I had no idea what I was doing. But I know that I did it because there is proof, there is footage. When I see that, I realize I was very naïve and brave about it in a way.”

With one sole run on SNL in the 2013-14 season, John Milhiser’s time on the series is most remembered for his “4th Grade Talent Show” sketch featuring Lady Gaga. To commemorate the 50th season, the comedian wrote a lengthy tribute about the bit with Mother Monster on Instagram, where he further thanked Michaels for the opportunity. 

“I love SNL and still religiously watch it,” he wrote. “Much love to Lorne Michaels for putting me on his show and for making many of us fall in love w/ sketch comedy.”

Jerry Minor hit the SNL stage during its Emmy-nominated 2001 installment. Looking back on his time as a featured player, he told Vulture, “My experience wasn’t as fun as it could have been,” while adding that he “should’ve relaxed more.”

Minor has since appeared in a 2011 episode of How I Met Your Mother, two season eight episodes of The Office and joined the cast of Abbott Elementary as Mr. Morton in season two. 

A charming performer who incorporated guitar and music into his comedy, Luke Null joined in season 43, along with Chris Redd and Heidi Gardner. He was a standout in Chicago’s improv scene, but didn’t impress Michaels, and was released from his contract after a single season. His most memorable sketch is probably the one in which he plays Kenny Longhorn, a country music-playing talk show host.

Mike O’Brien appeared on camera during season 39, but he had a longer tenure as a writer on the series. After joining in 2009, he remained with SNL until 2015, and became a part of the cast in 2013-2014. Three years after his departure, O’Brien created NBC’s A.P. Bio, which ran for four seasons.  

Michael O’Donoghue is credited as the first head SNL writer. Despite only making a few onscreen appearances, he remained with the program as a writer until he was fired in season three for a skit about then-NBC president Fred Silverman. Dick Ebersol later invited him back for season six, though he was fired before season seven ended. 

O’Donoghue’s final season with SNL arrived in season 11 when Michaels invited him back, though he went on to be (once again) fired. He collected two Emmys for his writing on the show in 1976 and 1977. O’Donoghue died in 1994 of a cerebral hemorrhage. 

An odd footnote in a brilliant career, Emily Prager appeared in a single episode of SNL in 1981 and was then abruptly sacked. A writer and performer with a sharp wit and an ear for satire, Prager was denied a shot at establishing herself on air, and her sudden departure is often cited as one of the quickest cast turnovers in the show’s long history.

Rather than fading away, though, Prager went on to carve out a career as a novelist, journalist and essayist, contributing to The New York Times and publishing acclaimed books like In the Missionary Position and Roger Fishbite. Her very short-lived SNL experience is a footnote her career and also the show; it underscores its unpredictability — and how some voices are better suited to other mediums.

Another casualty of the doomed ’85 season, the National Lampoon’s Vacation series breakout never quite found his groove on the sketch show. He is best remembered for his Ronald Reagan impression before he parted ways with the show. His career declined and he began behaving eccentrically, claiming later to be targeted by a shadowy group of “Hollywood star whackers.” He also found himself getting in trouble with the law.

Before his time on SNL, Rob Riggle was a United States Marine. He was a castmember for the show’s 30th season, and went on to join The Daily Show in 2006 after his 2005 exit. He has one Emmy nomination. 

Ann Risley was a featured player on season six of SNL. She has since retired from her career as an actress and comedian, but landed roles in Honkey Tonk Freeway, Rich and Famous and Desert Bloom after her run on the sketch comedy show. 

Tim Robinson started out as a featured player for season 38, though he proved better suited as writer on the show. He lent his writing skills to SNL from 2013-16, and has continued to act in various projects over the years. He has three Emmys, all tied to his 2023 comedy special I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson.

Charles Rocket was a standout castmember during his single season on SNL. He hosted “Weekend Update” and “The Rocket Report,” but was fired simultaneously with Jean Doumanian and a wave of other castmembers after he said the F-bomb on-air.

Rocket went on to act in Dumb and Dumber (1994), Dances With Wolves (1990) and Hocus Pocus (1993). He died of suicide in 2005.

A member of Los Angeles’ The Groundlings, Joe Rudnitsky joined SNL in its 2015-16 run. Despite a one-season limit, he’s continued to work in Hollywood. A year after his departure, he appeared in the Reese Witherspoon-led rom-com Home Again, Netflix’s 2018 Set It Up and the streamer’s 2024 Lindsay Lohan-starring holiday comedy Our Little Secret. 

Son to I Love Lucy writer Bob Schiller, Tom Schiller was brought onto SNL as a featured player for one season, though he’s most remembered for serving as a writer on the series. He joined in season one, where he remained until season five in his sole featured player season. Schiller later returned to SNL in its 14th season and stayed for one more as a writer through season 15. 

He further contributed to the legacy of the sketch comedy program as he directed many of the show’s accompanying short films, including projects that spotlighted castmembers Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase. Schiller has three Emmy wins under his belt, all for his writing on the series.

Paul Shaffer’s segway to onscreen SNL work came in season five after he served as part of the SNL band from its debut season. So far, he’s the only member of the band to transition to being a featured player. Following his 1980 exit, Shaffer segued to being David Letterman’s musical director in 1982 on Late Night With David Letterman. 

He remained there with Letterman until 1993, though he continued his professional working relationship with the iconic TV host for his full tenure on the Late Show (1993-2015). In 1987, Schaffer notably made his SNL return as host. He has four Emmy nods, with half of them linked to his work on Late Night.

​​In 1984, Michaels was still a year away from returning when the show, in deep trouble, brought in a cast of seasoned comedy vets (besides Short there was Christopher Guest, Rich Hall and Harry Shearer) to shore up the ranks. Short was already well established as a breakout weirdo from SCTV, and he lent some of his existing and proven characters to SNL, most memorably Ed Grimley. That single Short season also provided Nathan Thurm, the defensive PR man from a 60 Minutes spoof, and his synchronized swimming brothers with Shearer.

Short has had a dynamic career outside of SNL, composed of leading roles in projects like 1987’s Innerspace to the ongoing Hulu comedy Only Murders in the Building. He has two Emmys, two SAG Awards and one Tony under his belt.

Before her acid-tongued and often raunchy comedy made America blush, Sarah Silverman had a blink-and-you-missed-it SNL stint in the 199-94 season. Hired as both writer and a featured player, the soon-to-be queen of comedy appeared in only a few sketches, while none of her original material made it onto the show. Since her departure she’s joked that she was “fired via fax,” but she also seems to get it: Her acerbic and personal style doesn’t really fit into a sketch-driven machine’s dynamic.

A short stint that was largely forgotten by viewers, Silverman’s time at SNL still opened up some doors as her talent and appeal is undeniable. She quickly rebounded, finding her voice outside of her beloved stand-up routines on Mr. Show With Bob and David; she also doubled down on her stand-up career, which led to The Sarah Silverman Program and Emmy-winning specials. Silverman exited Studio 8H unfulfilled, but she went on to become one of the most distinctive comedians of her generation.

Stand-up comic and actress Jenny Slate’s one-season run on SNL is remembered mostly for the F-bomb she dropped during her very first episode, in a sketch alongside Kristen Wiig. While hearing “fucking” on TV has since become almost normalized, back in 2009-10 — just a few years after “Nipplegate” — censors were still on high alert for live slip-ups. Slate went on to build a career of supporting and occasional leading roles in film, as well as unforgettable sitcom guest spots like her Parks and Recreation turn as Mona Lisa.

Reflecting on her time at SNL, she’s among the few castmembers to say she hated the experience; it rattled her so badly that she struggled to return to stand-up, her first love: “I couldn’t do my stand-up joyfully. I was a ghost of myself.” Slate has said her firing wasn’t about the F-bomb, but simply that she wasn’t a fit. Fifteen years on, that turbulent year is ancient history, and she’s firmly established as an original voice of comedy.

The New Zealand actress is remembered as the first SNL castmember to be born outside of North America. Before being cast on season 10, Pamela Stephenson had appeared in the British sketch comedy series Not the Nine O’Clock News in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and also played a role in 1983’s Superman III. 

Yes, this comedian and filmmaker, known for his roles in Zoolander, Meet the Parents, Night at the Museum, There’s Something About Mary and Tropic Thunder, as well as directing the Emmy-winning series Severance, was once a castmember on SNL. In 1989, Stiller was on the sketch comedy series for a total of four episodes and left the show after only five weeks.

Earlier this year, he spoke to The New York Times’ podcast The Interview about why he left the show. “I knew that I couldn’t do well there because I wasn’t great at live performing,” Stiller said. “I got too nervous. I didn’t enjoy it, and I wanted to be making short films. So, like, in the moment, there were reasons why, and I had this opportunity to do this MTV show.” 

Terry Sweeney may have only been with SNL for one season, but his impact on the series is profound. Sweeney became the first openly gay man to be a featured player in 1985, after writing for the show years earlier. He performed in drag on the show, giving celebrity impersonations of women including Nancy Reagan, Joan Collins and Joan Rivers.

However, it must not be forgotten that Sweeney’s inclusion in the sketch comedy show was in the middle of the AIDs epidemic. “The homophobic paranoia and hysteria around this disease had straight folks wondering if it was even safe to have a gay waiter bring you your food or touch your plate,” the actor told Out Magazine in 2022. 

Despite the political landscape at the time, Sweeney came out while he was working as an SNL writer before becoming an official castmember. “I knew it could cost me my job and I would never have this chance again, but what was that in the face of all the agony that my fellow queer people were going through?” Sweeney added. “I thought it was an important time to be very public about coming out of the closet.”

Chloe Troast was a featured player on SNL during its 49th season, and she was notably the only new addition to the cast in the 2023-24 installment. When announcing her departure on TikTok, she wrote, “This was not my choice, I wish I was there getting to be with my friends. It truly felt like a second home. Thank you to everyone. I love you all.”

Danitra Vance joined SNL during its 11th season, where she made history as the first Black lesbian on the show’s cast (though she was not out at the time). After one year on the show, she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1990, and incorporated her diagnosis into her skit called “The Radical Girl’s Guide to Radical Mastectomy.” Vance died of cancer in 1994. She was 35. 

Dan Vitale was featured in only three episodes of the 11th season. When asked why his appearances were so scarce on SNL, he told Vulture, “I wound up spending most of that year in rehab.” Before his time on the beloved show, Vitale worked with Michaels on The New Show. He died in 2022. 

Nancy Walls had a short run on SNL, only emerging as a featured player during season 21. Just before she joined the cast in 1995, she wed Steve Carell. Since her SNL days, Walls has appeared in a few of Carell’s projects, including The Office and The 40-Year-Old Virgin. 

Emil Wakim is the most recent one-and-done SNL performer, having joined in 2024 and exited this year in 2025. The announcement of his departure from the show came as part of a cast exodus ahead of season 51. “It was a gut punch of a call to get but i’m so grateful for my time there,” Wakim wrote in the caption of his Instagram post where he revealed the news. 

A member of the comedy troupe The Groundlings, Michaela Watkins spent a solo season on SNL during the 2008-09 installment. There, she impersonated Barbara Walters, Glenn Close and Joan Rivers. Watkins has continued to maintain a career in entertainment, acting in projects including Hacks and Tiny Beautiful Things. 

SNL was an early career move for Damon Wayans, working on the show during season 11. After his run with the Michaels-created sketch comedy series, he went on to have a breakout role in fellow sketch comedy show In Living Color. Wayans worked on the latter series from 1990-94 and went on to create and star in Fox’s Damon (1998), star in My Wife and Kids (where he played Michael Kyle from 2000-05) and Lethal Weapon (2016-19). 

He recently led CBS’ sitcom Poppa’s House alongside his son Damon Wayans Jr., though the show was canceled in 2025. Wayans has been nominated for four Emmys, all stemming from his work on In Living Color. 

During season six, Patrick Weathers was a featured player. Before SNL, he embarked on a career as a musician, which he picked up after his tenure with the series. 

Noël Wells had a swift run with SNL on season 39, though she’s continued to work in various Hollywood projects. In 2017, she wrote, directed and starred in Netflix’s Mr. Roosevelt, voiced Ensign D’Vana Tendi in Star Trek: Lower Decks from 2020-24 and has done additional voice work for Craig of the Creek. 

Brooks Wheelan wasn’t just an SNL castmember on season 39, but also a writer. Following that experience, he lent his voice to Big Hero 6: The Series and delivered his 2024 comedy special Alive in Alaska. 

Alan Zweibel was a castmember during season five, though he served as an SNL writer from 1975-80. Across his time with the show, he earned three Emmys, all for his writing. He created It’s Garry Shandling’s Show in 1986 and served as a consulting producer on Curb Your Enthusiasm‘s second and third installments.