Who Is Chloe Troast? Meet The New ‘SNL’ Cast Member For Season 49

The Writers Guild strike may have cut Season 48 short by a few episodes, and delayed the start of Season 49 by a couple of weeks, but Saturday Night Live is rarin’ to get back to producing live and pre-taped sketch comedy from within 30 Rock, and they’re bringing the entire cast back. With one new addition: Chloe Troast.

Who is Troast, you might be wondering if you’re not knee-deep in the New York University or lower Manhattan/Brooklyn comedy scenes?!?

Troast, a 2019 NYU grad from Ho-Ho-Kus, N.J., attended college alongside the fellas from Please Don’t Destroy (John Higgins, Ben Marshall, and Martin Herlihy) and will co-star with them in their upcoming Peacock movie, Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain. Troast also filmed a role last summer in the forthcoming Max original film, Sweethearts, starring Kiernan Shipka.

She also created, wrote, and stars in DOHL’S, an animated short series which premiered last month on Adult Swim. Herlihy also voices characters in this series.

Her hiring extends a streak of several years in which SNL has recruited new cast members from the flock of “New Faces” touted each July at the Just For Laughs festival in Montreal. Troast participated in this summer’s New Faces Characters showcase, where she showed off personifications such as her throwback burlesque “Broadway legend,” Pepper Slit. Here’s a full backstory on Pepper Slit, courtesy of her sketch group, LISA.

Last year, Troast also performed most Friday nights at the former UCB location in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood as part of Asylum NYC’s house improv troupe, Asylum Mainstage Presents. (That location was demolished at the end of 2022, and Asylum NYC has yet to reopen in its new spot in the Flatiron District)

You may have seen her already on your social media radar, as I did, last year in this bit mocking the Met Gala, which she filmed with her frequent collaborator, Jamie Linn Watson.

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Troast and Watson were part of the Asylum Mainstage Presents troupe, as well as the sketch group, A Crazy Amazing Friendship, whose other members include William Banks and Jacob Dysart. Since April, Troast also has co-hosted a Friday-night live show called Cherry at PUBLIC hotel in the Lower East Side (Please Don’t Destroy performed on the inaugural show, as well as SNL writer Asha Ward).

On SNL, which returns Oct. 14, Troast will quite naturally fit into the aesthetic of the Please Don’t Destroy shorts, and she’ll also be able to match the hjinks level of recently-promoted cast member Sarah Sherman.

But Troast also carries an intangible quality, a mischievous glint in her eye. I told her in person after a live show in April that she boasts the best kind of chaotic energy … it reminds me more than a bit of Kate McKinnon, and how McKinnon could elevate a simple premise such as a debriefing of alien abductees and make it a recurring sketch classic.

So I’m very much looking forward to seeing how SNL incorporates Troast’s voice into the show this season.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat. He also hosts the podcast The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First that are comprised of half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories.