Saturday Night Live is primed to look very different in season 51, and one of its recent castoffs is reacting to the dramatic fan response.
The exits of SNL season 50 castmembers Devon Walker, Emil Wakim, Michael Longfellow and Heidi Gardner were announced this week, leading to stunned reaction from viewers of the long-running NBC sketch show. Gardner had been a castmember for seven seasons, while Walker and Longfellow had been SNL performers for three seasons. Wakim had logged just one year as a featured player.
On Thursday, one X user tagged Walker and Longfellow in a post sharing previous photos of the pair posing together, with the fan adding a note to “wish you both nothing but the best.” This led Walker to respond, “Yall acting like we died lol we just getting different jobs.”
This sentiment mirrored that of an Instagram Story that Walker posted earlier this week when news broke that he was leaving the Lorne Michaels-created series. “Just to be clear, this is good news!” the performer wrote at the time. “It was just time for me to do something different. Please don’t be hitting me with the ‘I’m so sorry’ — we not on that at ALL. Sometimes mom and dad just don’t see things eye to eye.”
Michael Longfellow on Saturday Night Live.
Will Heath/NBC/Getty Images
Earlier on Thursday, Longfellow posted to Instagram that he would not be returning for his fourth season: “Wish I was but, so it goes. It was the best three years of my life so far.”
In his own Instagram note this week, Wakim wrote that being informed that he would not return “was a gut punch of a call to get but i’m so grateful for my time there.”
Gardner has yet to comment publicly on her departure. She was the longest-tenured female member of the show’s active cast.
During an interview with Puck last week, Michaels acknowledged that cast cuts would be likely to come soon. He noted that James Austin Johnson would continue to portray President Donald Trump.