
Saturday Night Live (SNL) is a live US-American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC, a terrestrial television network in the United States, on October 11, 1975.
Lorne Michaels had a vision: to bring live late-night comedy/variety to television. NBC was playing reruns of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson on Saturday nights, but wanted to feature new programming instead. And so, SNL was born, albeit under the name NBC's Saturday Night, since sportscaster Howard Cosell was already using the name Saturday Night Live for his own prime-time comedy/variety show. Michaels also parodied Cosell's cast, who had been named "The Prime Time Players," by billing his own cast as the "Not Ready For Prime Time Players."
Saturday Night Live is one of the longest-running network television programs in the United States with over 869 episodes broadcast over the span of 44 seasons as of 2019. A number of the show's sketches have been developed into feature films.
Throughout its more than four decades on air, Saturday Night Live has received a number of awards, including 36 Primetime Emmy Awards, two Peabody Awards, and three Writers Guild of America Awards. In 2000, it was inducted into the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame. It was ranked tenth on TV Guide's "50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time" list, and in 2007 it was listed as one of Time magazine's "100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME." As of 2015, the show had received a total of 156 Emmy nominations, the most by a single series in television history. The live aspect of the show has resulted in several controversies and acts of censorship, with mistakes and intentional acts of sabotage by performers and guests alike.
List of cast members on Wikipedia
Cast members by year of first appearance
1975
- George Coe (✡)
- Michael O'Donoghue (†)
- Chevy Chase
- Dan Aykroyd
- John Belushi (†)
- Jane Curtin
- Garrett Morris
- Laraine Newman
- Gilda Radner (✡)
1977
1979
- Peter Aykroyd
- Jim Downey
- Tom Schiller
- Paul Shaffer
- Alan Zweibel
- Brian Doyle-Murray
- Harry Shearer
- Don Novello
1980
- Denny Dillon
- Gilbert Gottfried (✡)
- Yvonne Hudson
- Matthew Laurance
- Gail Matthius
- Ann Risley
- Charles Rocket (†)
- Patrick Weathers
- Eddie Murphy
- Joe Piscopo
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
- Joan Cusack
- Robert Downey, Jr.
- Anthony Michael Hall
- Randy Quaid
- Terry Sweeney
- Danitra Vance (†)
- Dan Vitale
- Damon Wayans
- Nora Dunn
- Jon Lovitz
- A. Whitney Brown
- Dennis Miller
1986
1989
1990
1991
1993
1994
- Chris Elliott
- Janeane Garofalo
- Laura Kightlinger
- Michael McKean
1995
- Morwenna Banks
- David Koechner
- Nancy Walls
- Fred Wolf
- Mark McKinney
- Jim Breuer
- Cheri Oteri
- Colin Quinn
- Molly Shannon
- Will Ferrell
- Darrell Hammond
1996
1998
- Chris Parnell
- Jimmy Fallon
- Horatio Sanz
1999
2000
- Jerry Minor
- Tina Fey
- Maya Rudolph
2001
- Dean Edwards
- Jeff Richards
- Amy Poehler
- Seth Meyers
2002
2003
2004
2005
2008
2009
- Jenny Slate
- Nasim Pedrad
2010
2012
2013
2014
- Sasheer Zamata
- Colin Jost
- Michael Che
- Pete Davidson
- Leslie Jones
2015
2016
2017
2018
- Ego Nwodim
2019
- Chloe Fineman
- Bowen Yang
2020
- Andrew Dismukes
- Lauren Holt
- Punkie Johnson
2021
- Aristotle Athari
- James Austin Johnson
- Sarah Sherman
2022
- Marcello Hernandez
- Molly Kearney
- Michael Longfellow
- Devon Walker
2022
Five-Timers Club
Facetiously dubbed by Tom Hanks in 1990 as "one of the most exclusive clubs in the world," the performers who have either hosted or appeared as a musical guest on Saturday Night Live at least five times are often given special recognition on the show.
List of Five-Timers on Wikipedia
- Steve Martin
- Alec Baldwin
- John Goodman
- Paul Simon
- Buck Henry
- Tom Hanks
- Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters)
- Chevy Chase
- Tom Petty
- Christopher Walken
- Randy Newman
- Elliott Gould
- James Taylor
- Danny DeVito
- Sting
- Beck
- Drew Barrymore
- Candice Bergen
- Bill Murray
- Dave Matthews
- Jon Bon Jovi
- Eminem
- Justin Timberlake
- Ben Affleck
- Tina Fey
- Scarlett Johansson
- Melissa McCarthy
- Dwayne Johnson
- Kanye West
- Rihanna
- Jonah Hill
- John Mulaney
- Paul Rudd
- Woody Harrelson
- Jack White
- Emma Stone