Saturday Night Live is saying goodbye to Chloe Fineman, who has officially announced her departure from the iconic NBC sketch show after seven seasons.
The comedian and actress shared the news with fans in a heartfelt Instagram post on Thursday, revealing she is ready to embark on her next career chapter.
Her exit comes ahead of the show’s upcoming 52nd season this autumn.
Fineman’s departure marks the latest exit in what has been a period of major cast upheaval for the long-running late-night show.
Ahead of season 51 last year, Saturday Night Live saw a massive shake-up with the departures of veteran cast members Heidi Gardner and Ego Nwodim, alongside Devon Walker, Emil Wakim, and Michael Longfellow.
Bowen Yang also parted ways with the show partway through the season.
To help fill the gap, SNL brought in five new featured players last year: Tommy Brennan, Jeremy Culhane, Ben Marshall, Kam Patterson, and Veronika Slowikowska.
Reflecting on her time at Studio 8H, Fineman penned an emotional tribute to her colleagues and the show’s creator, Lorne Michaels.
“After 7 wonderful seasons at SNL I have decided it’s time for my next chapter,” she wrote.
“It’s cliche to say this but working at SNL has been the greatest privilege of my life. I still can’t really believe I got to be a part of it. I fell in love with the place the second I walked through the door. Lorne (if you’re reading this on your burner account) I want you to know that I am forever in your debt.”
She went on to praise the sheer dedication and hard work of the production crew behind the scenes.
“Every day I was lucky enough to be surrounded by the best people in the business, and I was constantly amazed watching them work,” Fineman wrote, highlighting the high-pressure environment where crew members would sew a JoJo Siwa costume in 10 hours, write a cold open at 2pm on a Saturday, or finish the visual effects of a pre-tape just minutes before the dress rehearsal.
The comedian also laughed about the extreme emotional highs and lows that every writer and performer experiences on the show. “I’m definitely not the first to make this observation but it really is funny looking back at it all now, because at the show you get so invested in everything you work on,” she observed. “You sob uncontrollably when your sketch isn’t picked. You storm into a producers office telling them they just made the biggest mistake of their lives. You call everyone you know to complain. And then you look back a few years later and it was a sketch called “lipstick for thicc dogs.””
Fineman explained that this all-consuming intensity is simply part of the unique magic of the show. “But that’s just the show. You respect it so much that you give it absolutely everything you have even when it’s incredibly stupid. So you’re ecstatic when it works out and the most devastated you’ve ever been when it doesn’t. And in the end it doesn’t matter all that much but it did at the moment.”
Ultimately, Fineman decided that while walking away is difficult, the timing is right for her to move on.
“It’s really hard to leave SNL but it does feel like the right time,” she admitted.
“I’m going to miss it a lot. But the people who work there are my family and that place is my home, and I know I’ll never be too far away.”
She signed off the emotional post with a final joke for her fans: “And I swear to God, one day, sometime in the future, they WILL make lipstick for thicc dogs.”
Having originally joined the show in 2019 as a featured player, Fineman earned a promotion to the repertory cast two years later.
Over the course of her seven seasons, she became a fan favourite largely thanks to her incredibly sharp impressions, which ranged from a spot-on Drew Barrymore to an uncanny Timothée Chalamet.
While Saturday Night Live fans will certainly miss her presence in the live sketches, Fineman already has plenty of exciting projects lined up outside of the late-night scene.
Her non-SNL acting credits already include roles in Freakier Friday, as well as voice-over roles in hit animated projects like Big Mouth and Despicable Me 4.
Fans can also look forward to seeing her in Prime Video’s upcoming romantic comedy sequel, Red, White & Royal Wedding.
