Entertainment
NBC’s Biggest ‘Saturday Night Live’ Problem Is Getting Harder to Ignore
For over 50 years, Saturday Night Live has been entertaining viewers, delivering laugh-out-loud moments and parodying just about everything under the sun. And while Lorne Michaels‘ series has been a consistent mainstay for NBC over the years, with some seasons being more beloved by fans than others, the show has an issue on its hands that should be addressed by the time Season 52 comes along.
When looking back at the recent departures from the show, there’s one problem that’s becoming glaringly obvious: the lack of representation. So while SNL seems to have made a conscious effort in the last decade to make its cast more representative of modern America and society, the latest wave of departures has left the show facing the possibility of reversing some of that progress. It’s a problem that needs to be fixed, now rather than later.
The Lack of Diversity Is Becoming a Problem for ‘SNL’
Saturday Night Live‘s most recent departure was Chloe Fineman, who had been a favorite on the show for seven seasons. “I have decided it’s time for my next chapter,” she wrote in a July 16 post on Instagram. “It’s cliché to say this, but working at SNL has been the greatest privilege of my life. I still can’t really believe I got to be a part of it. I fell in love with the place the second I walked through the door.” Fineman’s departure follows the shocking exit of Bowen Yang, who left midway through Season 51 and had been on the show for seven seasons, Ego Nwodim, who left after seven seasons in September 2025, and Heidi Gardner, who left in August 2025 after eight seasons. Each of these exits not only showed how quickly SNL was losing its most veteran cast members, but how the show has, slowly but surely, lost its diversity in both female actors and LGBTQ voices (Bowen was the first openly gay Asian-American cast member in SNL history).
Diversity issues aren’t exactly a new issue on the show either. Per the Los Angeles Times, SNL has only had eight Black female cast members in its history: Yvonne Hudson, Danitra Vance, Ellen Cleghorne, Maya Rudolph, Sasheer Zamata, Leslie Jones, Punkie Johnson and Ego Nwodim. “Ya’ll gotta hurry up and you gotta find somebody, this is a ‘break glass in case of emergency,’” TV host Sherri Shepherd urged after Nwodin’s departure. “It is an emergency.”
In Season 51, while diversity between its cast members was becoming an increasingly more obvious issue, celebrity hosts and cameos quietly filled in the gaps. Among the hosts for the season were Bad Bunny, Teyana Taylor, and Colman Domingo. But while hosts can fill those diversity gaps, it’s only a temporary, short-term fix and is far from being a substitute for representation within the current ensemble. The ensemble itself determines what stories get told, who gets recurring characters, develops chemistry, and eventually becomes the next generation of SNL stars. Female and LGBTQ actors are less and less a part of that group, and that’s troubling, to say the least.
The Diversity in ‘SNL UK’ Only Highlights the Issue
Of course, when looking at the diversity issue in SNL, one can’t help but compare it to the newly assembled cast of SNL UK, which first premiered on March 22, 2026, and is already renewed for Season 2. SNL UK has an original cast with a stronger representation of women, women of color and LGBTQ voices without treating diversity as a special event or relying on guest stars to provide it. Cast members include Hammed Animashaun, Ayoade Bamgboye, Larry Dean, Celeste Dring, George Fouracres, Ania Magliano, Annabel Marlow, Al Nash, Jack Shep, Emma Sidi and Paddy Young. Their diversity as a whole makes the disparity in SNL harder to dismiss, and an even more egregious problem in need of solving.
Ultimately, while Lorne Michaels and the SNL team aren’t fully in charge of all the departures from the show, this gap between Season 51 and Season 52 presents the production team with the opportunity to fix the lack of diversity in the cast. After all, new cast members are added to the show every season, and SNL is in need of fresh, diverse voices and points of view now more than ever.
- Release Date
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October 11, 1975
- Showrunner
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Lorne Michaels
- Directors
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Dave Wilson, Don Roy King, Liz Patrick, Andy Warhol, Linda Lee Cadwell, Matthew Meshekoff, Paul Miller, Robert Altman, Robert Smigel
- Writers
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Will Forte, Bill Hader, Tina Fey, Kristen Wiig, Chris Parnell, Asa Taccone, John Lutz, Tom Schiller, Simon Rich, Michael Patrick O’Brien, Nicki Minaj, Herbert Sargent, Matt Piedmont, John Solomon, Chris Kelly, Alan Zweibel, Kent Sublette, Ari Katcher, Marika Sawyer, Sarah Schnedier, Scott Jung, Justin Franks, Jerrod Bettis, Rhiannon Bryan
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