Saturday Night Live cast member Devon Walker has left the show, claiming the iconic TV comedy was sometimes “toxic as hell.”
The 34-year-old comedian announced his departure on Monday on his Instagram account. He posted a note with the cryptic title, ‘Wait... did he quit or did he get fired?’—a question he never directly answered. His caption read, “me and baby broke up.”
After writing for Netflix sitcom Big Mouth, Walker joined the SNL cast in 2022, and was promoted to the repertory cast last year.
Comparing jobs in the entertainment industry to “a bunch of little marriages,” Walker said on Instagram, “some of ’em last for a long time if we’re lucky, but most of them are fleeting. Permanent until they’re not.”
“That’s the deal. You know what it is when you sign up,” Walker added.
He continued, “Me and the show did three years together, and sometimes it was really cool. Sometimes it was toxic as hell. But we... made the most of what it was, even amidst all of the dysfunction. We made a f---ed up lil family.”
Walker thanked his friends Alex English and Gary Richardson, who are both SNL writers—the trio ran the DAD comedy show at New York’s Jane Hotel. The comedian said they “really went from running a bar show to working together at 30 Rock!”
The comedian then posted a separate Instagram story, which added, “Just to be clear, this is good news! It was just time for me to do something different. Please don’t be hitting me with the ‘I’m so sorry’ — we not on that at ALL. Sometimes mom and dad just don’t see things eye to eye.”
The Daily Beast has contacted NBC for clarification on Walker’s exit.
The 51st season of Saturday Night Live will premiere on Saturday, Oct. 4, on NBC. A U.K. version of the program, which launched in the U.S. in 1975, is also being steered by SNL creator Lorne Michaels.
Talking to Puck last week, Michaels, 80, said there would be several current cast members exiting and amid pending changes to the show.
Michaels also said he was “stunned” when CBS axed The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, but noted the way people consume television has changed.
“There’s two audiences now,” Michaels said. “There’s the audience that is [watching on] TikTok and YouTube, and there’s a linear audience. Both Seth [Meyers] and [Stephen] Colbert are heirs to David Letterman... They’re going to be doing that [type of show], just as I’m still doing SNL, as if everybody’s watching that night."
He also revealed the Donald Trump character on SNL, played by James Austin Johnson, will continue to go to air, even though the president is not an SNL fan.
Trump, who hosted SNL in 2015, slammed the program on his Truth Social account three years ago.
“I once hosted Saturday Night Live, and the ratings were HUUUGE!," Trump wrote. “Now, however, the ratings are lower than ever before, and the show will probably be put to “rest.” It is just not, at these levels, sustainable.”
Trump called it, “a bad show that’s not funny or smart,” and said Michaels was “angry and exhausted, the show even more so. It was once good, never great, but now, like the Late Night Losers who have lost their audience but have no idea why, it is over for SNL - A great thing for America!”
Talking to Puck, Michaels noted Trump’s superpower as a communicator: “Whatever crimes Trump is committing, he’s doing it in broad daylight.”
He added, “There is absolutely nothing that the people who vote for him—or me—don’t know. And he is a really powerful media figure. He knows how to hold an audience. That’s a very powerful thing, and I think it was always underestimated. His politics are obviously not my politics, but denouncing [him] doesn’t work."
