Season 41
Saturday Night Live, NBC's Emmy Award-winning late-night comedy showcase, enters its 41st season for another year of laughs, surprises and great performances.
This season's cast includes:
Repertory Players
Vanessa Bayer
Beck Bennett
Aidy Bryant
Colin Jost
Taran Killam
Kate McKinnon
Kyle Mooney
Bobby Moynihan
Jay Pharoah
Cecily Strong
Kenan Thompson
Sasheer Zamata
Featured Players
Michael Che
Pete Davidson
Leslie Jones
Jon Rudnitsky
Since its inception in 1975, SNL has launched the careers of many of the brightest comedy performers of their generation. As The New York Times noted on the occasion of the show's Emmy-winning 25th Anniversary special in 1999, in defiance of both time and show business convention, SNL is still the most pervasive influence on the art of comedy in contemporary culture.
At the close of the century, Saturday Night Live placed seventh on Entertainment Weekly's list of the Top 100 Entertainers of the past fifty years.
The program has won 45 Emmy Awards, the most for any show in television history. SNL has been honoured twice, in 1990 and 2009, with the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award and cited as truly a national institution.
Saturday Night Live was inducted into the Broadcasting Hall of Fame by the National Association of Broadcasters, and the show continues to garner the highest ratings of any late-night television program, entertaining millions each week.
With live show surprises, especially those timed to the election - from Barack Obama's surprise walk-on, Hillary Clinton's performance opposite Amy Poehler and Senator John McCain's Weekend Update appearance - SNL is making headlines and influencing the political dialogue while skewering it at the same time.
Beyond politics, the show's cast of recurring characters and its take on pop culture targets remain spot-on. The addition of the show's Emmy Award-winning SNL Digital Shorts continues to keep the show as current today as it was when it debuted.
Saturday Night Live, which premiered October 11, 1975, is broadcast live from NBC's famed Studio 8H in New York City's Rockefeller Center. The program is a production of Broadway Video in association with SNL Studios. Lorne Michaels is the executive producer.