‘SNL’ Includes Four Featured Players: Marcello Hernandez, Molly Kearney, Michael Longfellow and Devon Walker

Saturday Night Live has tracked down its four new featured players. The long-running NBC show said Thursday that it has added Marcello Hernandez, Molly Kearney, Michael Longfellow and Devon Walker to its cast.

It comes after maker Lorne Michaels uncovered at the Emmys that there would be new cast members joining for Season 48.

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Kearney has showed up on Amazon’s A League of Their Own; Hernandez has opened for any likes of Tim Dillon and Gilbert Gottfried and showed up on Telemundo’s Acceso Total; Longfellow showed up on NBC’s Bring the Funny, hosted by SNL’s Kenan Thompson; and Walker has showed up on Comedy Central and writes for Big Mouth and Phoebe Robinson’s Everything’s Trash.

“This will be transition year,” Michaels said backstage at the Emmys, where SNL won the award for Outstanding Variety Sketch Series. “Change years are always difficult but always exciting. There are new people. There are four new people, at least for now.”

It comes after Deadline uncovered back in May that Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant and Kyle Mooney were leaving the show toward the finish of Season 47 alongside Pete Davidson. It later arose that Alex Moffat, Melissa Villaseñor and Aristotle Athari wouldn’t get back by the same token.

SNL returns on October 1 with three consecutive shows.

Michaels added that the pandemic held the enormous cast together longer than maybe anticipated.

“The pandemic sort of interfered with the national order of things. I think there was a bonding; people got very close,” he added. “When we did those at-home shows, you got to see everyone’s apartment where and how they lived. There was an intimacy and connection between audience and group. I couldn’t imagine we could work without that whole team so we kept going.”

Saturday Night Live is produced in association with Broadway Video.