Saturday Night Live’s 51st season is finally airing on the 2025 TV schedule, but it hasn’t been without changes. The SNL cast went through a small overhaul, with five cast members leaving and five new featured players being brought on. Fans got a taste of the new cast in the season premiere over the weekend, and they already seem to be settling into Studio 8H just fine. And it may have helped that James Austin Johnson continued a tradition that Kyle Mooney did when he was on for new cast members.
Johnson has been on SNL since Season 47, and he was the first one confirmed for Season 51 due to his spot-on impersonation of President Donald Trump that is much-needed during most cold opens. Of course, he knows what it’s like to be the newbie on set, as does every SNL cast member, and with so many new faces joining for Season 51, Johnson told Today a very sweet gesture he likes to do to help his new coworkers:
I like to go to lunch with the new cast members.
told CinemaBlend her thoughts on seeing new cast members joining the show, revealing that she’s seen some of them in The Groundlings, a theatre school in LA. She’s watched them develop there, and it’s “always exciting” for her when they join SNL.
It’s always exciting when SNL gets a new crop of cast members, and seeing their first sketches or Weekend Update appearance. And since Season 51 just started, there will be much more to come from Jeremy Culhane, Kam Patterson, Tommy Brennan, Veronika Slowikowska, and Ben Marshall, whom fans know from Please Don’t Destroy. The Season 51 premiere is now streaming with a Peacock subscription.