Molly Kearney Departs 'Saturday Night Live', Calling It “A Dream Come True”
Molly Kearney Departs 'Saturday Night Live', Calling It “A Dream Come True”
The sketch comedy series’s first non-binary cast member exits after two seasons
Well, that’s another one down. Just a day after four-season veteran Punkie Johnson announced her departure from the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live, Molly Kearney has done the same ahead of its fiftieth season. The show’s first non-binary cast member has departed after two seasons.
Kearney, who was part of the Friends in the Punkie Johnson & Friends lineup where the latter’s departure initially got out from, also made their formal announcement on Instagram. The caption to a swath of set photos. It read “Yall that’s a wrap on my time on SNL! Reflecting on the amazing 2 seasons I got on this show, it was such a dream come true. So incredibly grateful for this period in my life. So much love to all my big hearted buddies behind the scenes who make the magic happen every week. So many bald caps, so little time. It was a true honor to work with such a talented group of writers and DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THE CAST.” She gave a special shoutout to the cast members that boarded the show with her at the start of season 48: Devon Walker, Michael Longfellow (who were also in the PJ&F lineup) and Marcello Hernandez, their “day 1 crew”. They finished with “Head up and heart out!”.
Their now ex-castmates came out in the comments to support, including each of their day 1 crew, Bowen Yang, who wrote “forever legend”, Chloe Fineman who commented, “BESTIE!!!!!”, as well as Chloe Troast, James Austin Johnson, Ego Nwodim, Heidi Gardner, Sarah Sherman, and Please Don’t Destroy’s Ben Marshall. Even alums from before her time commented, like Molly Shannon who wrote, “What an incredible run, Molly. Proud to know you. You make Cleveland proud.” Bobby Moynihan unloaded his kindness with heart emojis. Writers Mike DiCenzo and Celeste Yim also gave love.
Being non-binary, Molly had a healthy balance of male and female roles, playing a nun more than once and a pageant contestant at least once, though most of their impressions were male, including Albert Einstein, Terry Bradshaw, and Randy McNally in a memorable Weekend Update piece. In their strike-shortened debut season, which was 18 episodes, they were second-to-last to Punkie in screentime with 48 minutes 11 seconds. In a full 21-episode second season, they had less than a minute of screentime in 11 episodes, including one shut out, and zero Weekend Update pieces, amounting to 23 minutes and 52 seconds despite 4 more total appearances (40 vs 36). It was a crash of momentum following a piece in the Ana de Armas-hosted rookie season finale addressing the influx of anti-LGBTQ laws. While they never became a repertory player, we wish them the best for their future, because SNL tenure length has never been an indicator of equivalent general career success.
Source: Variety (stats from Saturday Night Network)