‘Saturday Night Live’ to bring back Cecily Strong, Kenan Thompson, many others for season 42

We know that the 42nd season of “Saturday Night Live” is going to have to press onward without Taran Killam, Jay Pharoah, and Jon Rudnitsky, but the NBC series has went ahead and confirmed that the remainder of the season 41 cast will be (thankfully) staying put for a little while longer.

As first reported by Splitsider, you are going to see Vanessa Bayer, Beck Bennett, Aidy Bryant, Colin Jost, Kate McKinnon, Kyle Mooney, Bobby Moynihan, Cecily Strong, Kenan Thompson, Sasheer Zamata, Michael Che, Pete Davidson, and Leslie Jones all back in the famous New York studio this fall. What’s notable about this primarily is that the show is managing to return a number of performers whose stars are clearly on the rise. McKinnon and Jones were a part of the “Ghostbusters” movie this summer, Strong and Bayer have been getting a wide array of other movie TV gigs, while at the same time Kenan (the show’s longest-tenured cast member) took part in “Maya & Marty” this summer.

Ultimately, we do imagine that there are going to be some other new featured players added to the show at some point in the coming weeks, especially on the male side to make up for some of the departures. That’s the thing about “SNL”: Even though it does tend to have devastating exits, the show always does tend to find its way back with some new people who are talented in their own right. We just hope they find someone who can really embrace this role and become a major participant quickly; that is something they’ve lacked in recent years beyond maybe a Jones or a Pete Davidson.

The new season of “SNL” does not have a host yet for the premiere, but we’ll let you know if / when that changes.

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