Saturdays at 11:30 p.m., live coast-to-coast. NBC's Emmy-winning late-night comedy showcase enters its 48th season.

Saturday Night Live (often abbreviated to SNL) is an American late-night live television sketch comedy and variety show created by Lorne Michaels and developed by Dick Ebersol that airs on NBC and Peacock. Michaels currently serves as the program's showrunner. The show premiere was hosted by George Carlin on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title NBC's Saturday Night. The show's comedy sketches, which often parody contemporary culture and politics, are performed by a large and varying cast of repertory and newer cast members. Each episode is hosted by a celebrity guest, who usually delivers the opening monologue and performs in sketches with the cast, with featured performances by a musical guest. An episode normally begins with a cold open sketch that ends with someone breaking character and proclaiming, "Live from New York, it's Saturday Night!", properly beginning the show

Subject of the month by: Allia L McCoy

Interviews with the show producer Lorne Michaels and other clips!

Thompson returned to sketch comedy when he joined the cast of Saturday Night Live in 2003, becoming the show's first cast member born after its 1975 premiere. According to Thompson he had previously sent an audition tape to SNL multiple times with them claiming he looked too young, with him noting "it was a couple years’ worth of that". A fan of the show before joining, Thompson noted that he feared that being on the show was a "disservice" to it stating "It was weird for me for a long time".^[Thompson was a featured player until 2005 (spanning the 29th and 30th seasons) and was promoted to repertory player at the beginning of season 31 (the 2005–2006 season).

In 2013, he refused to play any more black women on the show and demanded SNL hire black women instead.

Thompson has been a cast member on SNL for 20 seasons, breaking the record for the longest-tenured cast member in the show's history previously held by Darrell Hammond, who was on the show for 14 years. Thompson became the most senior cast member in the second half of the 2013–14 season, following the departure of Seth Meyers. He is also the longest-serving African-American cast member, surpassing Tim Meadows, who stayed on the show for ten seasons. Thompson also holds the record for most celebrity impressions performed on the show, performing 139, beating Hammond's previous record of 107.Although early on he planned to stay on the show until something else came along, by 2019 he noted that SNL was his "forever plan".

Thompson has been nominated for five Primetime Emmys for his work on SNL, winning once. He has thrice been nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series, in 2018, 2020 and 2021. For co-writing the song "Last Christmas", in 2017 he was nominated for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics, an award he then won in 2018 for the lyrics to "Come Back Barack" (along with Chris Redd and Will Stephen).

In 2014, SNL head writer Brian H. Tucker noted that simply putting "KENAN REACTS" would get a script more laughs, further elaborating, "Put him in your sketch somewhere, anywhere, and your sketch will get better. Because Kenan knows how to take ordinary lines and make them funny, and take funny lines and make them special. "Similarly, Lorne Michaels in a 2019 article would refer to Thompson as "the person I most rely on in the cast". Vulture referred to him as the "heir apparent" to Phil Hartman, both being "the glue" of their respective casts.

Thompson's celebrity impressions on SNL include Al Sharpton, Whoopi Goldberg, Bill Cosby, Charles Barkley, David Ortiz, OJ Simpson, and Steve Harvey on the recurring Family Feud sketch.

He has performed in over 1,500 sketches, hitting the mark during the March 5, 2022 episode hosted by Oscar Isaac.

In commemoration of his 20th anniversary on the show, Thompson received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on August 11, 2022. It was placed next to Lorne Michaels' star.

Weekend Update is a Saturday Night Live sketch and satirical news program that comments on and parodies current events. It is the show's longest-running recurring sketch, having been on since the show's first broadcast, and is typically presented in the middle of the show immediately after the first musical performance. Historically, one or two of the players are cast in the role of news anchor, presenting gag news items based on current events and acting as hosts for occasional editorials, commentaries, or other performances by other cast members or guests. In modern times, dedicated anchors are chosen among writing staff, often lead writers, in lieu of cast or featured players. Chevy Chase has said that Weekend Update – which he started as anchor in 1975 – paved the way for comedic news shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert  Report.^[1]      

“I live in a van, down by the river!”

- Chris Farley as Motivational speaker Matt Foley

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