It’s not a secret that Saturday Night Live is a cutthroat environment. However, with its return inching closer on the 2025 TV schedule and the exit of four cast members as well as a few writers, there's been a lot of attention on the NBC institution, its employees and how it handles cast turnover. When Devon Walker left, he highlighted that fact too, calling some of his time on the series “toxic as hell.” Now, he’s explaining why that was the case and how the show could add “a sprinkle of humanity” to some of its practices.
Walker was the first of four cast members to leave SNL ahead of Season 51. He announced it with an Instagram post, where he wrote that “sometimes it was really cool” to work there, and at other times it “was toxic as hell.” He called the group he worked with their a “fucked up lil family,” and while he was clearly grateful for his years on the show, he didn’t shy away from how difficult it was.
In the aftermath of that, he was asked about what made the show “toxic” during an interview with Variety. In response, he said:
If you read about the show, if you’re knowledgeable about it at all, you can certainly pick up on things that are toxic about it. The show hasn’t changed much in all the years they’ve been doing it. There are things that went down on the show that I wouldn’t talk about for free. There are a lot of things I’m still trying to find the right avenue to go into detail about.
As Andy Samberg said, SNL can take a toll on people. It’s long and late hours, and it’s a competitive environment where comedians have to put themselves out there week after week with the hope that their sketch makes it to air. As Abby Elliott said, it’s like “a pressure cooker.”
Another harsh reality that comes with the series has to do with how the cast evolves and turns over. While some voluntarily leave – Walker’s choice to go was mutual with the show – others are let go. And sometimes, cast members don’t find out if they’ve been fired or rehired until late in the summer, right before SNL premieres. That’s where the veteran thinks it can specifically improve, as he said:
I think… [long pause] there is a measure of humanity that the show could benefit from. What ends up happening over the summer is oftentimes people are left hanging with big life decisions — people trying to start families or buy homes — and there’s no word from the show about whether they have their job. The show won’t tell them all summer and then will ultimately end up firing them when there’s been months of them trying to work their situation out.
Walker continued by saying he wasn’t specifically put in this situation. However, he knows other people were, which led him to say:
That wasn’t my situation, but I’ve known of situations where that’s happened. If there’s one thing I hope for the future of the show, it’s that a sprinkle of humanity could be added into it.
We know that at least two of the cast members who left last week had experiences where they unexpectedly got the news that they wouldn’t be returning.
In the case of Michael Longfellow, he found out from his agent that he wouldn’t be back while he was at the airport waiting to board a flight. Emil Wakim was also let go from SNL ahead of Season 51, and he explained on Instagram that he found out about it while celebrating his friend’s birthday at Six Flags.
On top of being in less-than-ideal places to get this bad news, these casting shakeups were revealed about a month before SNL’s October 4 premiere. That’s the point Walker was getting at; he explained that he thinks it’d be better if the series informed people about the status of their jobs earlier, so they don’t have to spend so much time waiting in limbo. While he gets that the business is “cutthroat,” he also said this:
I understand it’s show business and it’s cutthroat, but people have lives, and people deserve to know the status of their job at a reasonable juncture. Most people are told they’re coming back to work in a week.
Even as a fan, it’s hard to comprehend all these changes so quickly, so I can’t imagine what it would be like to be on the receiving end of this news. So, Walker’s point makes complete sense.
Now, considering all the conversation surrounding this season's exits as well as the five new additions to SNL and other shakeups (like part of Please Don’t Destroy breaking up), it will be interesting to see how these hiring and firing practices evolve.
However, in the meantime, Saturday Night Live will be back and “live from New York” on October 4 at 11:30 p.m. ET, and you can catch it on NBC or with a Peacock subscription.
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