Chloe Fineman Leaving SNL After Seven Seasons

Chloe Fineman is the first cast departure after Saturday Night Live Season 51.

Leaving after seven seasons, Fineman became a featured player for SNL’s 45th season from 2019-2020 and was then promoted to repertory status at the beginning of Season 47 in 2021.

“After 7 wonderful seasons at SNL I have decided it’s time for my next chapter,” Fineman wrote in a lengthy Instagram statement. “It’s cliche to say this but working at SNL has been the greatest privilege of my life. I still can’t really believe I got to be a part of it. I fell in love with the place the second I walked through the door. Lorne (if you’re reading this on your burner account) I want you to know that I am forever in your debt.”

She continued:

“Every day I was lucky enough to be surrounded by the best people in the business, and I was constantly amazed watching them work. Sewing a [JoJo] Siwa costume in 10 hours. Writing a cold open at 2pm on a Saturday. Finishing the VFX of a video minutes before dress (I don’t know if ‘finishing VFX’ is the right technical term but you get the idea).

I’m definitely not the first to make this observation but it really is funny looking back at it all now, because at the show you get so invested in everything you work on. You sob uncontrollably when your sketch isn’t picked. You storm into a producers office telling them they just made the biggest mistake of their lives. You call everyone you know to complain. And then you look back a few years later and it was a sketch called ‘lipstick for thicc dogs.’

But that’s just the show. You respect it so much that you give it absolutely everything you have even when it’s incredibly stupid. So you’re ecstatic when it works out and the most devastated you’ve ever been when it doesn’t. And in the end it doesn’t matter all that much but it did at the moment.

It’s really hard to leave SNL but it does feel like the right time. I’m going to miss it a lot. But the people who work there are my family and that place is my home, and I know I’ll never be too far away.

And I swear to God, one day, sometime in the future, they WILL make lipstick for thicc dogs.”

Fineman’s most viral sketches include Snack Homiez, Forever 31, and the Domingo series with Marcello Hernandez. She also portrayed Drew Barrymore, Britney Spears, Nicole Kidman, Timothée Chalamet, Sydney Sweeney, Meryl Streep, Jennifer Coolidge, and Anna Delvey throughout her run.

Outside of SNL, Fineman faced backlash this past April after telling the story of pantsing a six-year-old boy in a Vanity Fair video interview with her castmates.

“I was fired as a camp counselor,” Fineman said. “I pantsed a boy. He would lift my shirt all the time. It was a different time. He would be like, ‘Hey, could I have a hug?’ And then I’d go to hug him, and he’d lift my shirt, like a dick.”

She continued, “And then I was like, ‘I’m going to get back at you.’ And so we were on a hike, and I was like, ‘Hey, Ollie, go look over there. It’s a hawk.’ He looked, and then I yanked his pants down, and then I was fired.”

Some of the comments and reactions have since been edited out of the video, but the story remains no less shocking.

Fineman is currently in negotiations for her potential next project, a Netflix drama series titled Myron Bolitar, based on Harlan Coben’s book series. She has also done voice work in Big Mouth and Despicable Me 4.