Meet ‘SNL’s New Cast Members For Season 46

When Saturday Night Live announced earlier this week that the entire cast would return for Season 46, it didn’t occur to me that SNL might add even more comedians in front of the camera, because the cast has never been so big before.

Until now.

SNL‘s 46th season will open Oct. 3, 2020, with an on-air cast of 20! That’s the most not-ready-for-primetime players sharing 30 Rock office space since November 1991, when two new women (Melanie Hutsell and Beth Cahill) joined two months into Season 17 to expand that year’s on-air cast to 18 comedians. How will they fit 20 comedians into one episode’s worth of sketches?

If that seems wholly unmanageable, just remember that at least five of the late-night institution’s biggest stars — including Emmy winners Kenan Thompson and Chris Redd, two-time Emmy nominee Aidy Bryant, first-time Emmy nominee Cecily Strong and two-time Emmy winner Kate McKinnon — all have other TV projects they’ll be devoting themselves to after the November elections. SNL creator Lorne Michaels has it all under control. So to speak. Michaels is an EP with his Broadway Video producing the upcoming NBC sitcom Kenan, starring Thompson as a widowed morning show host with Redd playing his brother/assistant/manager; he’s also overseeing Strong’s new musical comedy ordered pre-pandemic by Apple TV+, as well as season three of Bryant’s Shrill for Hulu. And then there’s shining star McKinnon, all set to play Carole Baskin in a TV series based on the Wondery podcast, Joe Exotic, that’ll air on NBC, USA and Peacock.

So there will be opportunities for the new additions to get their fresh faces onto NBC’s screens and into our hearts.

And who are these freshest faces not ready for primetime but hopefully ready for SNL? Here’s how SNL creator Lorne Michaels described them to Vulture: “There is Lauren Holt, who auditioned a year ago, and again last season, and the plan was to bring her in toward the end of the season that ended abruptly. She’s funny and fresh. Punkie Johnson, who is from New Orleans, and a stand-up. And Andrew Dismukes is the third. He was on the writing staff, but he’s a stand-up as well.”

Here are some other ways to describe them.

Lauren Holt

Originally from Charlotte, N.C., Holt comes out of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Los Angeles, where she performed on house sketch team, The Audacity, founded a musical improv troupe, The Pickup, and presented her own characters via the showcase, Characters Welcome. Five years ago, she appeared as a helpful ally in the Lady Gaga music video for “Til It Happens To You.”

Holt can easily slide into sketches written for either Bryant or Strong with her stage presence and penchant for singing.

Here’s the short film, Parent Teacher Conference, which earned her a Best Actress nomination at the Atlanta Comedy Film Festival in November 2018, in which Holt portrayed a mom who’s shocked to find out what the kids have been drawing in class.

Punkie Johnson

Originally from New Orleans, Johnson keeps SNL‘s streak alive for plucking “New Faces” out from Montreal’s Just For Laughs festival. She performed at that showcase last summer, and opened 2020 by performing in the Comedy Central showcase series, Bill Burr Presents: The Ringers.

In the past year, you also may have seen Johnson as the dance biter in HBO’s A Black Lady Sketch Show…

…or heard her making a prank call for Comedy Central’s reboot of Crank Yankers.

She also has appeared in episodes of Space Force, Corporate, and Adam Ruins Everything. Johnson started as a server at The Comedy Store in and worked her way up to performing and becoming a paid regular at the vaunted West Hollywood comedy club (which itself is the subject of a docuseries for Showtime in October).

It’ll be interesting to see how SNL writes for Johnson. Perhaps they’ll take a cue from her own social media feed. For the past three weeks, Johnson has been sharing her adventures helping her nephews with virtual home schooling via Instagram!

View this post on Instagram

WE ARE FINALLY GETTING THE HANG OF THIS BUT THE SCHOOL WORK LOAD IS GETTING BIGGER…AND THE ASSIGNMENTS ARE GETTING HARDER… IM LITERALLY LEARNING EVERYTHING ALL OVER AGAIN TO MAKE SURE I CAN HELP THE KIDS THE BEST I CAN…TO ALL MY PARENT CHECK IN WITH ME HOW YALL HOLDING UP ???? CALL ME IF YOU NEED….

A post shared by Punkie Johnson (@punkiejohnson) on Sep 14, 2020 at 5:05am PDT

Andrew Dismukes

Originally from Port Neches, Texas, Dismukes remains a bit of a young unknown, which will make it intriguing to see how he blossoms once getting a promotion from SNL writing staff to the stages of Studio 8H in 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

After all, Dismukes was still an undergrad at UT-Austin when he finished runner-up in the 2016 Funniest Person in Austin contest.

The following summer, he went to Montreal’s JFL as a stand-up without an agent or a manager as an “Unrepped New Face.” Within days of that Montreal showcase in July 2017, Dismukes had a manager in Los Angeles who steered him to the writing opening at SNL.

He told UT-Austin about his 2017 audition: “I was asked to audition in New York City and it’s a different process depending on the person’s approach whether they do sketches or characters and my strength is stand-up. On the first audition, you go into the studio on the main stage and it’s empty except for three older guys in the seats including Lorne Michaels. It’s intimidating. You can hear the lack of laughter in your head.”

He already snagged a brief moment of airtime in 2019, appearing in Kristen Stewart’s monologue as one of the audience members picked to ask her a question.

Even after 45 seasons, it’s always a bit hit or miss with new cast members, and some SNL rookies who only last one season turn out to be superstars elsewhere later.

But with SNL planning at least five and perhaps up to seven consecutive weeks of new episodes (Michaels pledged to keep producing new episodes until the November presidential election is decided?!), they’ll need as many cast members as they can just to avoid burnout!

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

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