{"id":87944,"date":"2025-08-22T16:53:06","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T16:53:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/87944\/"},"modified":"2025-08-22T16:53:06","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T16:53:06","slug":"lorne-michaels-confirms-cast-shake-ups-coming-to-saturday-night-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/87944\/","title":{"rendered":"Lorne Michaels Confirms Cast Shake-Ups Coming to Saturday Night Live"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to Lorne Michaels<\/a>, cast shake-ups are \u201cfor sure\u201d coming to Saturday Night Live\u00a0ahead of the upcoming Season 51 of the long-running sketch comedy show.<\/p>\n

In an interview with Puck.News<\/a>, Michaels said that the show had put off making changes until after SNL50: The Anniversary Special<\/a>. \u201cI wanted people coming back and being part of [the 50th season]. So when Kate [McKinnon] hosted, Kristen [Wiig] and Maya [Rudolph] came back for it. And that meant there couldn\u2019t be those kind of disruptions [to the cast], or anything that was going to take the focus off [the 50th season].\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that casting changes will \u201cbe announced in a week or so,\u201d though he did confirm that James Austin Johnson will return to play Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

Michaels also addressed rumors that he\u2019s retiring (he\u2019s not) as well as handing off more duties (he is): \u201cThat\u2019s already been happening [in] the past year or so. More people are involved in the choices and in the decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related Video<\/p>\n

The sage of sketch also gave more insight into the 50th Anniversary, including the decision to have Miley Cyrus sing Sinead O\u2019Conner\u2019s version of \u201cNothing Compares 2 U.\u201d He said that he wished the late singer could have sang it herself.<\/p>\n

If [O\u2019Connor] were still alive, I would have asked her to sing that song. But it was represented by Miley singing it with so much power.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rumors and outside observers have long suggested that several longtime castmembers are planning to leave\u00a0Saturday Night Live, including \u201cWeekend Update\u201d anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che<\/a>. As for Michaels, he\u2019s not slowing down, and plans to launch a UK version of the show<\/a> in 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"According to Lorne Michaels, cast shake-ups are \u201cfor sure\u201d coming to Saturday Night Live\u00a0ahead of the upcoming Season…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87945,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-87944","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}