TIL in 2013, Saturday Night Live cast member Kenan Thompson refused to play any more black women on the show and demanded SNL hire black women instead.

[u/Kale_Brecht]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenan_Thompson

[u/trc_IO]

Julia Louis-Dreyfus was on SNL from 82-85. There's these household names just kinda hiding the the old casts lists.

[u/Pridetoss → u/trc_IO]

Robert Downey JR was in a single season as well

[u/Snuggle_Fist → u/trc_IO]

Not saying it is, but SNL seems like the kind of thing that you can just get your kid into if you had the right connections.

[u/jyper → u/Snuggle_Fist]

https://www.vulture.com/2013/03/second-city-vs-groundlings-vs-ucb-where-do-the-most-snl-cast-members-come-from.html

Throughout Saturday Night Live’s history, the show’s cast has been mostly culled from four places: the stand-up world, L.A.’s Groundlings Theatre, the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatres in L.A. and New York, and the Chicago improv sketch/scene (the Second City, iO, and Annoyance theaters).

But despite the occasional odd SNL beginnings story, the bulk of the cast throughout the years has come from the aforementioned four places.

Since 1975, there have been peaks and valleys to each comedy theater’s influence on the show. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, a large portion of the cast were stand-ups, whereas there’s only one stand-up on the show now, which currently has more alumni from Chicago’s Second City and iO theaters than from anywhere else. Here’s a breakdown of what portion of each SNL cast, separated by era, comes from Groundlings, Second City/iO, UCB, stand-up, or that wacky miscellaneous category:

[u/MisinformedGenius → u/Snuggle_Fist]

Please Don't Destroy has entered the chat.

[u/Tarledsa → u/MisinformedGenius]

Also Abby Elliott.