As is pretty customary to do around this time of year, Saturday Night Live announced some additions to its roster with seven new staff writers and three new featured players.
First the writers... Sam Jay, Gary Richardson, Erik Marino, Andrew Dismukes, Steven Castillo, Claire Friedman, and Nimesh Patel all join the staff. We've had the pleasure of seeing both Sam Jay and Nimesh Patel perform stand-up comedy live and can say with great certainty that those two in particular will make fine additions to the writer's room. You can even check out Sam Jay's Comedy Central Half Hour set to premiere on October 13th.
Next up, we have those we'll see in front of the camera as three new featured players will be added to the SNL roster, replacing those that departed at the end of season 42 (Sasheer Zamata, Vanessa Bayer, Bobby Moynihan).
The newbies are – Heidi Gardner from the Groundlings in Los Angeles. Out of Chicago is Luke Null a musical comedian, and probably the most high-profile of the new hired, comedian Chris Redd. Redd recently stared in the movie, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping and just had his Comedy Central Half Hour premiere two weeks ago.