Chloe Fineman Exits SNL After 7 Seasons

Chloe Fineman has left Saturday Night Live after seven seasons. She announced the news via Instagram on Thursday.

Her departure comes ahead of the show’s 52nd season on NBC. Fineman leaves after a sizable upheaval in the show’s cast last year, which saw the departures of Heidi Gardner, Ego Nwodim, Devon Walker, Emil Wakima and Michael Longfellow before season 51 began and Bowen Yang partway through the season. SNL also added five featured players (Tommy Brennan, Jeremy Culhane, Ben Marshall, Kam Patterson and Veronika Slowikowska) last season

Fineman wrote in announcing her departure:

After 7 wonderful seasons at SNL I have decided it’s time for my next chapter.

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.

Every day I was lucky enough to be surrounded by the best people in the business, and I was constantly amazed watching them work. Sewing a jojo Siwa costume in 10 hours. Writing a cold open at 2pm on a Saturday. Finishing the VFX of a video minutes before dress (I don’t know if “finishing VFX” is the right technical term but you get the idea).

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. 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.”

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.

It’s really hard to leave SNL but it does feel like the right time. 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.

And I swear to God, one day, sometime in the future, they WILL make lipstick for thicc dogs.

Fineman joined SNL in 2019 as a featured player and was promoted to the main cast two years later. She had a wide repertoire of impressions — ranging from Drew Barrymore to Timothee Chalamet — and featured in a host of other sketches as well.

Outside of SNL, Fineman’s credits include Freakier Friday, voice work on Big Mouth and Despicable Me 4 and the upcoming Prime Video movie Red, White & Royal Wedding.