Democracy Dies in Darkness

SNL adds three cast members for Season 50

Ashley Padilla, Emil Wakim and Jane Wickline are joining as featured players when the show returns later this month.

3 min
Ashley Padilla is one of the new SNL cast members. (Stephanie Nelson)
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Ashley Padilla, Emil Wakim and Jane Wickline will join the cast of “Saturday Night Live” as featured players for its monumental 50th season, SNL announced Tuesday.

Padilla, who’s from the Bay Area, has been a main company member of the Groundlings, an improv and sketch comedy group in Los Angeles that boasts such alumni as Melissa McCarthy and Jennifer Coolidge, as well as former SNL cast members Will Ferrell, Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig.

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Wakim is a Brooklyn-based stand-up comedian and writer born in Chicago and raised mostly in Bloomington, Ind. The Lebanese American performer made his late-night TV debut on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” in 2022, and he also took part in the New Faces of Comedy showcase at the 2022 Just for Laughs comedy festival in Montreal.

Wickline joins SNL from “Stapleview,” a live comedy show on TikTok that the Los Angeles Times described as “a sort of Gen Z answer to ‘Saturday Night Live.’” The Los Angeles comedian also has nearly 1 million followers herself on the platform.

SNL’s first Gen Z cast member, Marcello Hernández, as well as Michael Longfellow and Devon Walker — all of whom debuted as featured players in 2022 — were promoted to repertory players for the upcoming season.

Chloe Troast, who joined the cast as a featured player last season, confirmed that she won’t be returning. “Unfortunately i was not asked back to SNL this season,” Troast wrote on Instagram. “I wish i was going back to be with all the amazing friends i made there, it truly felt like home. But it wasn’t in the cards.”

Molly Kearney, the show’s first out nonbinary cast member, and Punkie Johnson, who spent four seasons on the show, both said their SNL goodbyes last month.

“Yall that’s a wrap on my time on SNL! Reflecting on the amazing 2 seasons I got on this show, it was such a dream come true. So incredibly grateful for this period in my life. So much love to all my big hearted buddies behind the scenes who make the magic happen every week,” Kearney wrote on Instagram. “So many bald caps, so little time. It was a true honor to work with such a talented group of writers and DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THE CAST.”

“It’s no bad blood, it’s no bridges burnt, it’s no hard feelings,” Johnson said in a video posted to Instagram. “ … SNL was a dream I didn’t even know that I could achieve. Man, I was a part of one of the most elite institutions in comedy, and I am so grateful for it.”

SNL’s 50th season will premiere Sept. 28, and its three-hour, prime-time 50th anniversary special is set to air Feb. 16.