Chloe Fineman announced today on Instagram that she has left Saturday Night Live after seven seasons as a cast member.
“It’s cliche to say this but working at SNL has been the greatest privilege of my life,” her IG post reads, in part: “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.”
Fineman, who turns 38 on July 20, has a supporting role in The Dink, the new Apple Original film about pickleball coming out next Friday, and Deadline reported that she’s negotiating to co-star in Myron Bolitar, Netflix’s drama series inspired by Harlan Coben’s book series.
On SNL, Fineman carved out a steady spot for herself thanks to her growing stable of celebrity impersonations. Among them: Drew Barrymore, Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, Britney Spears, Timothée Chalamet, Miley Cyrus, JoJo Siwa, and Jennifer Coolidge. Four years ago, she upped the stakes by suggesting she could sub in for pretty much any of her castmates with this pre-tape, “The Understudy.”
In a video posted the week of SNL’s Season 51 finale, the show asked Fineman to pick from among all 51 seasons worth of celebrity impressions to choose just one to air in a cast-curated version of “The Rundown.”
“Impressions are one of the harder things to get on the show if it’s not a political cold open. Finding that container sometimes is the tricky thing,” Fineman said in the above video segment. She praised the show’s use of “audition” pre-tapes to allow everyone from the cast to get in and get out quickly with an impression. “And I think there’s something really amazing about the one line, short little way to capture the essence of somebody.”
She also looked back fondly on her own first pre-taped celebrity impression, parodying Barrymore’s daytime talk show in 2020.
And whether she already knew that week would be her last on the show or not, Fineman nevertheless managed to sum her time up there like so: “Well, it’s taken me like seven years to realize that SNL is a variety show and we have a lot of variety, and I think I contribute to SNL and feel very at home in the variety of impressions and commenting on pop culture and what’s going on today. Doing the impression with love is the name of the game on this show. It’s like your best friend making fun of you, in like, a loving way.”
As I wrote in my recap of SNL51, Ashley Padilla’s rise as a key star on the show — inadvertently or not —resulted in less screen time or sketches to showcase Fineman. That couldn’t stop Fineman, however, from anchoring one of the best sketches of the past season, the SnackHomiez podcast parody of the very real podcast, MDFoodieBoyz.
On a related note, it’s wild to see where SNL’s Class of 2019 hires are now.
Bowen Yang bowed out midseason and received a full, formal farewell sketch complete with Cher and Ariana Grande sending him off in song. This week, Fineman walks away, sans fanfare, much like Heidi Gardner and Ego Nwodim the summer before her. And then there’s the third new hire initially announced alongside Yang and Fineman for Season 45: Shane Gillis. Fired within days, Gillis’s comedy career has exploded despite of and perhaps because of his firing. He not only has hosted SNL twice, but also this Saturday, he is performing stand-up at Lincoln Financial Field, home of the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles.
Every potential cast member is tasked to show off their ability to impersonate celebrities in their SNL auditions, with the idea that they may be called upon at a moment’s notice if they can look or sound like someone famous who just made headlines that week or even that very weekend. But the cast always has a couple of troupers who specialize in impressions. On the male side, that’s undoubtedly James Austin Johnson right now, following in the footsteps of past SNL greats such as Dana Carvey and Darrell Hammond. On the female side, Fineman mentioned in her May video for SNL that she felt inspired by the likes of Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Cecily Strong before and once she arrived, and shouted out Melissa Villaseñor as the great impressionist to come before her.
For the first half of this decade, Fineman has been that great impressionist.
This summer they’ll surely find a new voice. The show always does.
Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat. He also podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.