A Look at Some of the Longest-Running SNL Cast Members and What Kept Them on Air
Photo by Rosalind O'Connor / NBC Comedy Lists Saturday Night Live
Twenty years ago, Kenan and Kel and All That star Kenan Thompson became Saturday Night Live star Kenan Thompson. His 20-year run makes him the longest serving cast member in the Saturday night sketch series. He officially reached that mark five years ago when he beat the previous record holder Darrell Hammond. Up until Thompson’s impressive run and with a couple of exceptions, SNL cast members who became standout players would leave the show after a few seasons to pursue their own TV or film projects and maybe come back to host the show themselves.
Thompson hasn’t just defied that trend. He plans on staying on the show as long as they’ll let him.
“I’m going to try to make that record as long as possible,” he told PEOPLE in 2018 after reaching his 15th season. “There’s no reason for me to run out the door. I feel very lucky.”
And who can blame him? Thompson has a stable of characters and celebrity impressions that are still some of the most entertaining parts of the show and he’s got a natural talent for playing even the most mundane scenes to the height of his performance abilities.
Here are some of the other longest-running SNL cast members on the NBC late night staple who made their mark in various parts of the show, including political sketches, recurring character segments, and the Weekend Update:
Darrell Hammond
Thompson broke Darrell Hammond’s cast member record when he made it to his 15th season, and if you watched the show during Hammond’s run from 1995 to 2009, you know what helped him last so long.
Hammond is an actor and stand-up with an uncanny knack for celebrity impressions. He stepped in to play President Bill Clinton during the aftermath of 42’s most tumultuous scandals. That alone is a task no one thought anyone could top when SNL legend Phil Hartman left the show, but Hammond brought a caricature of Clinton that wasn’t just tonally accurate. It also felt more subtle and subdued as Clinton faced the looming status of a lame duck in the wake of his impeachment. Hammond also cemented his place in the cast in 1996 when his Sean Connery impression earned him regular appearances in the show’s long-running parody of the game show Celebrity Jeopardy!, in which stars are portrayed as dumber than rocks. Hammond’s Connery became the perfect foil for Will Ferrell’s portrayal of a long suffering Alex Trebek, enduring endless ribs about his mustache and the sexual proclivities of his mother. It’s an impressive run especially when you realize that almost none of Hammond’s characters carried the crutch of a pop culture catchphrase—if you don’t count “Suck it, Trebek.”
Seth Meyers
The Boom Chicago comedian joined SNL in 2001 and spent two years as a featured player and writer before taking over the Weekend Update desk and the co-head writer chair in 2006. He established himself as an effective performer and writer on the show but he felt destined to take over the Weekend Update chair even if he had to risk everything to get it, according to an interview he did with comedian Neal Brennan over the summer.
Every anchor who takes on the most coveted news desk in television comedy has to leave their own mark. Meyers took it more towards actual, hard-hitting satire and comic editorials that would shape his future in late night, building off the momentum set by WU anchor and writer Tina Fey. Acting more like an anchor with something to say other than just setups and punchlines also served him in character pieces on the WU desk, especially when Bill Hader joined in 2005 and brought his club critic Stefon to the desk (after Stefon “barely worked as a sketch” with host Ben Affleck the same year, according to Hader in an interview on Late Night With Seth Meyers). The pairing of Stefan’s insane, random ramblings with a burgeoning, behind the desk relationship made Meyers an equally funny foil for one of the show’s most beloved characters.
Maya Rudolph
The star of beloved cult classics like Mike Judge’s Idiocracy and Bridesmaids, Maya Rudolph is another clutch player who could jump into portrayals of key political figures like former First Lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Kamala Harris in return appearances as well as famous media faces such as Maya Angelou, Oprah Winfrey and Donatella Versace. However, she also cemented her place in the cast for seven years by offering an eclectic gallery of original characters in starring and supporting roles in sketches from 2000 to 2007.
Rudolph started with a character known as Brittanica, a singer in the fictional hip-hop duo Gemini’s Twin, that would lay the groundwork for her future impressions of Beyonce during and following her seven year run. She played one half of a pair of no-nonsense Bronx neighbors hosting a public access talk show called Bronx Beat that allowed Rudolph and Amy Poehler to improvise off of each other and deliver some harsh truths, no matter how founded or unfounded they may have been. Rudolph portrayed all of her characters with a competency and level of commitment that made them relatable, endearing, and funny. Anyone who can make Donatella Versace sound intelligible is doing something right.
Kate McKinnon
Few people could steal the spotlight as efficiently and regularly as Kate McKinnon. She reached her peak star status when she took on the role of presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton during one of the most tumultuous and disastrous elections of our lifetime, but she also has a talent for impersonating a variety of notable figures and a knack for great writing that produced some of the show’s most beloved modern characters.
It seems like there’s no limit to who McKinnon can imitate, from foreign leaders like former German chancellor Angela Merkel to American blowhards like Rudy Guiliani and Lindsay Graham. Along with fellow SNL star Aidy Bryant, she also seemed to have a love for doing “Bill Braskey”-esque sketches where a character delivers different jokes that fit a pattern within a set formula but with an extra dose of randomness. None captures this better than Barbara DeDrew, the co-owner of a cat store with a strange knowledge of her kitties’ voting records and frisky sexual behavior like Simon Cowell, “a grumpy British short hair” who “knocked up his best friend’s wife.” Her most famous and beloved character by far is Colleen Rafferty, a woman who seems unaccustomed to manners because she’s been the test subject for so many different cryptid and alien encounters, which get more lewd with each new detail. It’s no wonder Colleen was the first of her official so-long sketches for her final episode in 2022.
Tim Meadows
Phil Hartman, the cast member known as “Glue” for his ability to keep any sketch together in even the most harrowing of situations, had a “breakdown” during his monologue when he hosted the show in 1996. Meadows came to his dressing room as a part of the sketch and talked to Hartman through the door to get him to come back to the stage. When Hartman realized who he was talking to, he remarked, “Tim? You’re still on the show?”
Meadows’ run lasted from 1991 to 2000 during some of SNL’s most tumultuous and uncertain terms but he lasted because he’s also “the glue,” even if Hartman first earned the term. He studied improv along with fellow SNL alum Chris Farley in Chicago’s seasoned comedy scene and set the first 10 year record until Hammond beat it in 2005. Meadows became a key player because he could easily jump into impersonations of famous names like Michael Jackson, Tiger Woods, and OJ Simpson and develop his own recurring characters such as the unaware TV host Lionel Osbourne and his most famous creation Leon Phelps, aka The Ladies Man, who would earn him an SNL spinoff movie. Meadows decided to leave after a decade because, as he said in a 2019 interview with fellow SNL slum Dennis Miller, “I was really unhappy. I had fun doing the show but when I was away from it, I just wasn’t happy.”
Danny Gallagher is a freelance writer who’s written for Mental Floss, CNET, Cracked, and The Onion AV Club. He also enjoys Frasier reruns and the new Texas Chain Saw Massacre game. He’s on Facebook @writerdannygallagher.