Pete Davidson will remain a part of the Saturday Night Live cast for its upcoming 47th season.
And while the Big Time Adolescence and King of Staten Island star is returning to the fold, Beck Bennett—who first joined up with the SNL crew back in 2013—and former featured player Lauren Holt are not. A press release from NBC on Monday revealed that Aristotle Athari, James Austin Johnson and Sarah Sherman have been added as featured players in the upcoming season’s cast.
Addressing his departure from the show in an Instagram post, Bennett said the “incredible experiences” he was a part of for eight years “completely changed my life.”
The full 2021/2022 ensemble is as follows: Aidy Bryant, Michael Che, Pete Davidson, Mikey Day, Chloe Fineman, Heidi Gardner, Colin Jost, Kate McKinnon, Alex Moffat, Kyle Mooney, Ego Nwodim, Chris Redd, Cecily Strong, Kenan Thompson, Melissa Villaseñor and Bowen Yang. Featured players will include Aristotle Athari, Andrew Dismukes, James Austin Johnson, Punkie Johnson, and Sarah Sherman.
The new season of SNL premieres Oct. 2 with host Owen Wilson and musical guest Kacey Musgraves, whose excellent new album Star-Crossed was released earlier this month.
As for Davidson, who will soon be seen as the late Joey Ramone in an upcoming biopic for Netflix, speculation has been somewhat high in recent months regarding whether he would be aboard for another season of SNL. In June of this year, Davidson said his future with the show was “up in the air” at the time due to scheduling and contract matters.
“I started there with acne and left with tattoos,” he told Gold Derby. “It was a very crazy, long period of time. And I wasn’t ready for [this] season to end yet because I was really having so much fun.”