Rumors Point to Two New SNL Castmembers

With the announcement that Taran Killam, Jay Pharoah and Jon Rudnitsky would not be returning to Saturday Night Live this season, everyone in comedy has been awaiting the announcement to see who would be replacing them. Rumors are swirling around and it looks like at least two new castmembers are likely.

Although an official NBC announcement has yet to be made, on Friday Vulture reported that one of the new castemembers is 36-year-old Mikey Day who is already part of the team as a writer. Day got his start with the Groundlings in Los Angeles and has been writing for SNL since 2013. He wrote or at least co-wrote one of our favorite sketches this year- the Close Encounter alien abduction sketch that had Ryan Gosling breaking character with Kate McKinnon and Cecily Strong. Day is also a co-writer of Brother Nature, opening this weekend, which he co-wrote with outgoing castmember Taran Killam and stars Killam and Bobby Moynihan.

Also on Friday, Sean McCarthy of The Comics’ Comic reported that multiple sources have confirmed that Chicago break out comic Chris Redd will also be joining the cast. Redd scored a lot of love this summer for his scene stealing role in the Lonely Island movie Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. He played Hunter the Hungry, a young rapper modeled after Tyler the Creator. We became huge fans of Redd when we first saw him at the NBC Second City Breakout Comedy Festival in 2015. He returned for the 2016 festival already on the road to being a star, and now he’ll be headlining Second City’s first Breakout Festival in Los Angeles October 21-23.

Watch Mikey Day on the set of Wild n’ Out with RIP Michaels and in a sketch with Above Average’s My Drunk Aunts.

Here’s a clips of Chris’s multi-talents below, performing stand up, physical comedy, and watch him talking with Kevin Nealon at the Laugh Factory below.

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