If you thought the cast of Saturday Night Live couldn’t get any bigger, you thought wrong. In an interview with Vulture, SNL creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels revealed that the long-running NBC show has added three featured players to the cast for season 46. The news follows the show’s September 15 announcement that the entire cast from season 45 will return to SNL this fall, which means the cast will be comprised of a whopping 20 members for season 46.
Returning featured players Bowen Yang and Chloe Fineman will be joined by the three new hires. (Ego Nwodim, who was a featured player last season, has been promoted to repertory player for season 46.) The new cast includes Los Angeles–based UCB alum Lauren Holt, L.A. stand-up Punkie Johnson, and Andrew Dismukes, who was hired as an SNL writer for season 43 in 2017 and co-wrote the “Del Taco Shoot†sketch with Kyle Mooney and Beck Bennett. Here’s more info on each new cast member from NBC:
Lauren Holt is an actor, comedian, singer, and improviser. She was a house performer at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater in Los Angeles and starred in the independent web series The Filth and in the short film Parent Teacher Conference, for which she received a Best Actress nomination at the Atlanta Comedy Film Festival.Â
Punkie Johnson is a comedian and writer whose recent credits include Space Force, Corporate, Adam Ruins Everything, and Bill Burr Presents: The Ringers. She was a New Face at the Just for Laughs festival in 2019 and is a proud paid regular at the world-famous Comedy Store in Hollywood.Â
Andrew Dismukes has served as an SNL staff writer since season 43. He is a stand-up comedian who was selected for the 2017 New Faces Showcase at the Just for Laughs festival and has performed at other festivals including Comedy Central’s Colossal Clusterfest and the New York Comedy Festival.
Michaels also revealed to Vulture a big promotion on the SNL writing staff: Anna Drezen, who previously served as a supervising writer, has been bumped up to co–head writer, joining Colin Jost, Michael Che, and Kent Sublette.
For more updates from Michaels about the upcoming season of SNL, read Vulture’s interview with the SNL boss here.