‘Saturday Night Live’ also loses Jon Rudnitsky before season 42

Taran Killam and Jay Pharoah are not the only two people leaving “Saturday Night Live” prior to the start of season 42. We’ve also learned now that featured player Jon Rudnitsky is also out.

Losing Rudnitsky at this point is not much of a shock, especially in comparison to the other two departing cast members.  He was not in the majority of the sketches for the series, and when he did, not all of them were entirely well-received. To us, his most notable moment came during a “Weekend Update” performance of a “Dirty Dancing” routine, which we ironically thought at the time would be his way of having something great on his highlight reel in the event that “SNL” kicked him out the door. He’s far from the first featured player to leave after a year, and he surely not be the last.

With three men gone from the series, we imagine Lorne Michaels will get to work trying to find one or two male personalities to add to the cast. After all, Beck Bennett, Kyle Mooney, Bobby Moynihan, and Kenan Thompson are now the anchors of the cast from that side.

The one bit of good news we can offer, at least for now, is that seemingly the entire female cast is sticking around. That’s great news, given that Vanessa Bayer, Kate McKinnon, Cecily Strong, and Leslie Jones are some of the funniest people “SNL” has at their disposal right now. Jones in particular is having a great summer, in between “Ghostbusters” (which she starred in with McKinnon) and then a series of memorable Olympics tweets that led to her getting an invite to Rio.

If you do want to read more about Taran and Jay’s exit from the show, be sure to head over to the link here right now. Also, sign up over here to secure some other TV news on all we cover, sent right to you via our official CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: NBC.)