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The 2010–11 season of Saturday Night Live began September 25, 2010 with host
Amy Poehler and musical guest
Katy Perry. Before the start of the new season, four new cast members were added to fill the gap left behind by
Will Forte (who quit the show after eight years),
Jenny Slate (who was fired after her first season on the show),
Abby Elliott (who was promoted to repertory player), and
Bobby Moynihan (also promoted). The four new hires were improv comedians
Paul Brittain and
Vanessa Bayer, former MADtv and The Amanda Show cast member
Taran Killam, and stand-up comic and impressionist
Jay Pharoah. Second-year cast member
Nasim Pedrad stayed a featured player for this season.
Will Forte, who had been with the show since 2002 and completed eight seasons, announced on August 26, 2010 that he would be leaving the show.[1] Featured player
Jenny Slate was let go from the show after only one season.[2]
Former cast member
Amy Poehler hosted the season premiere. Poehler was the fourth female former cast member of SNL to return as a host, the third to have worked under Lorne Michaels, and the second one to have been a Weekend Update anchor.[4] She was also the 26th former cast member to return to host.
With this season, Jeff Bridges surpassed Sigourney Weaver's record for longest gap between hosting appearances (Weaver's gap was 24 years between her first appearance in 1986 and her second appearance in 2010;[5] Bridges has a 27-year gap between his first appearance in 1983 and his second appearance in 2010).[6]
Featured player
Kate McKinnon (a former cast member on
Logo's The Big Gay Sketch Show) joins mid-season, making her first appearance in April, on the episode hosted by
Sofia Vergara. McKinnon is SNL's first openly gay female cast member, the third lesbian cast member hired (after
Denny Dillon in 1980, though she wasn't open when she was on the show,[7] and
Danitra Vance in 1985, though Vance's sexual orientation was not known until she died in 1994), the second cast member hired to be openly gay (after
Terry Sweeney, who like Danitra Vance, was also from the 1985–86 season), and the second white lesbian cast member hired (after Denny Dillon).[8] McKinnon is also the first cast member from The Big Gay Sketch Show to be a cast member on SNL (and the second cast member from The Big Gay Sketch Show to cross over to a mainstream sketch comedy show.
Erica Ash, from MADtv's 14th and final season on FOX, is the first).
On May 12, 2013, NBC announced that Weekend Update anchor
Seth Meyers (who had been a cast member since 2001, and Weekend Update anchor since 2006), would be the new host of Late Night in 2014, succeeding
Jimmy Fallon as he takes over as the new host of The Tonight Show.[9] Meyers remained as Update anchor for the first half of the season, then left in February 2014, to host his incarnation of Late Night.[10] On September 16, 2013, it was announced that
Cecily Strong would be Meyers' co-anchor on Weekend Update.[11]
Six new cast members have been hired,
Upright Citizens Brigade performers
Beck Bennett,
John Milhiser,
Kyle Mooney, and
Noël Wells, stand-up comedian
Brooks Wheelan (who originally was hired as a writer until Tim Robinson was chosen instead), and four-year writer
Michael Patrick O'Brien (credited as "Mike O'Brien"). This is the highest number of cast members hired since
season 21 (1995–96) and, with the addition of Sasheer Zamata, this season has the most female cast members with seven, surpassing the number of six in the 1991–92 (season 17) cast.[12]