The annual culling of Saturday Night Live’s featured players continues, with Noel Wells and John Milhiser reportedly joining Brooks Whelan on the list of names Don Pardo no longer has to pronounce. According to Deadline, Mike O’Brien’s future is also uncertain, with discussions reportedly underway as to whether he should continue to have an on-screen presence—where he’s done great, low-key weird work in sketches like “Bird Bible” and “Monster Pals”—or return to the writers’ room. (“Some have been calling for him to get a shot at co-hosting Weekend Update,” Deadline adds, apparently ignoring that this was more or less settled six months ago.)
As for Wells and Milhiser, their departures appear to be a done deal, capping off a particularly brutal probationary season for first-timers who all rushed into the power vacuum created by so many departing SNL veterans. During their brief time there, Wells made her mark mostly through impersonations, taking on Lena Dunham in a Girls parody that went viral at the start of the year, and popping up as celebrities of varying degrees of quirkiness like Zooey Deschanel, Emma Stone, Alyson Hannigan, and Nancy Grace.
For Milhiser, he had fewer starring roles in sketches than any player besides late addition Sasheer Zamata, while arguably his biggest breakout was twice playing Jon Cryer. By way of consolation, that at least netted him a sympathetic tweet from Cryer himself.