Saturday Night Live’s 51st season is finally airing on the 2025 TV schedule, but it hasn’t been without changes. The SNL cast went through a small overhaul, with five cast members leaving and five new featured players being brought on. Fans got a taste of the new cast in the season premiere over the weekend, and they already seem to be settling into Studio 8H just fine. And it may have helped that James Austin Johnson continued a tradition that Kyle Mooney did when he was on for new cast members.
Johnson has been on SNL since Season 47, and he was the first one confirmed for Season 51 due to his spot-on impersonation of President Donald Trump that is much-needed during most cold opens. Of course, he knows what it’s like to be the newbie on set, as does every SNL cast member, and with so many new faces joining for Season 51, Johnson told Today a very sweet gesture he likes to do to help his new coworkers:
I like to go to lunch with the new cast members.
Not only are these new cast members starting a new job, but they are working on Saturday Night Live, which can certainly be nerve-wracking. Johnson taking them out to lunch probably makes them feel more at home and get to know one another before they jump into the craziness that is SNL. And this tradition apparently goes back to at least when Johnson started on the show:
Kyle Mooney did that for me, and Sarah Sherman, and Aristotle (Athari) when we started on the show, and I was always touched by that. And that was like a really kind of, you know — because it can be a lot at once when you come on to the show. It’s a big platform, and it’s a lot of new, crazy stuff. We’re like the only show that’s like this. So, it can be a lot to take on. So, I like to just kind of help everybody know that it’s like ‘Hey, we’re all hanging out, and we’re all comedians. We’ve done this before, you know what to do.’
I’ve always wondered how the new cast members on SNL acclimate to being on a show like SNL that is so big and so chaotic. Mooney initially taking out Johnson, Aristotle Athari, and Sarah Sherman for lunch and helping them get used to this new world. Johnson carrying that on to make other new cast members feel better might be my favorite thing about Saturday Night Live now. It’s even better that all the cast members know what it’s like to be new, so they probably have some wise advice for how to navigate the show.
Meanwhile, SNL vet Larraine Newman, who was on the first five seasons, told CinemaBlend her thoughts on seeing new cast members joining the show, revealing that she’s seen some of them in The Groundlings, a theatre school in LA. She’s watched them develop there, and it’s “always exciting” for her when they join SNL.
It’s always exciting when SNL gets a new crop of cast members, and seeing their first sketches or Weekend Update appearance. And since Season 51 just started, there will be much more to come from Jeremy Culhane, Kam Patterson, Tommy Brennan, Veronika Slowikowska, and Ben Marshall, whom fans know from Please Don’t Destroy. The Season 51 premiere is now streaming with a Peacock subscription.