From The Comic's Comic

Exploring the pipeline of New Faces to not-ready-for-primetime cast offers at Saturday Night Live

Montreal’s Just For Laughs festival puts this tagline on its 2021 New Faces: Characters showcase: Catch the best new solo sketch comics before your only option is to see them “Live, from New York…”

That’s a pretty big sell, right?

JFL outright boasting about how it serves as a pipeline and scouting agent for Saturday Night Live. How true has that been? In the past decade, remarkably so! As we can see by going through our own notes and programs, we’ve found that from 2010-2019, about two dozen comedians have made the leap from New Faces to SNL. Season 46 of SNL, which concluded in May, included eight cast members who once were New Faces, plus contributions from another eight writers who made New Faces debuts in Montreal.

Let’s look at the New Faces to SNL pipeline from the 2010s…

• 2010: Colin Jost* (stand-up, already an SNL writer, 2005-present; Weekend Update since 2014); Melissa Villaseñor (stand-up, SNL cast since 2016)

• 2011: FIRST YEAR OF JFL NEW FACES CHARACTERS Tim Robinson (characters, SNL cast 2012-13, SNL writer 2013-2016); Nick Rutherford (stand-up, SNL writer 2014-15)

• 2012: Natasha Rothwell (characters, SNL writer 2014-15)

• 2013: Pete Davidson (stand-up, SNL cast 2014-present); Brooks Wheelan (stand-up, SNL cast 2013-14); John Milhiser (characters, SNL cast 2013-14). JFL GALA IN 2013 for then SNL head writer Seth Meyers; also JFL TV TAPINGS hosted by Bobby Moynihan and Taran Killam.

• 2014: Drew Michael (stand-up, SNL writer 2016-18); LaKendra Tookes (SNL writer 2013-14)

• 2015: Claire Mulaney (stand-up, SNL writer 2013-15); Chris Redd (stand-up, SNL cast 2017-present); Jon Rudnitsky (stand-up, SNL cast 2015-16); Julio Torres (stand-up, SNL writer 2016-2019); Sudi Green (characters, SNL writer 2015-2021); Will Stephen (characters, SNL writer 2015-present)

• 2016: Ego Nwodim (characters, SNL cast ); Joanna Bradley (characters, SNL writer 2016-17)

• 2017: Heidi Gardner (characters, SNL cast -present); Andrew Dismukes (unrepped, SNL writer 2017-2020, SNL cast 2020-present); Steven Castillo (SNL writer, 2017-present). JFL GALA HOSTED by Michael Che and Colin Jost.

• 2018: Chloe Fineman (characters, SNL cast 2019-present)

• 2019: Anna Drezen (already writing supervisor, SNL writer 2016-present); Dan Licata (stand-up, SNL writer 2019-present); Punkie Johnson (stand-up, SNL cast 2020-present); Shane Gillis (stand-up, SNL cast 2019-2019)

Part of it is JFL manifesting its own destiny, as it were. If you build an SNL showcase, they will come. And they’re more likely to come and watch if you’ve also already booked SNL cast members and writers to perform on other showcases in Montreal, from stand-up showcases to the big televised galas. Because once you convince Jost or Meyers or Drezen (a writing supervisor on SNL before she got New Faces in 2019) to spend a week at the festival, they might just notice the potential in their fellow performers and put in a good word with Lorne to secure them an audition and a desk in 30 Rock.

JFL skipped over New Faces in 2020 (save for an online showcase of a few performers who broke through social media during the pandemic), but revived both the stand-up showcases as well as the characters showcase for 2021.

Who might break through this year to get an SNL invite before the start of Season 47?

Brooklyn-based Elena Skopetos is an alum of UCB’s Characters Welcome and Magnet Theater’s Character Bash who has performed her one-woman show, Elena Skopetos: Impressing My Dad, at The New York Comedy Festival and Toronto Sketchfest. She toured Europe with her two-woman show, Sisters Three, which was a New York Times Critic’s Pick. She currently works for Google, where she develops content for the Google Assistant. THAT’S A NICE DAY JOB!

As for her performances, Skopetos showed off her musical comedy chops with multiple songs, closing with her rendition imagining Lady Gaga’s rough draft of a song called “A Million Raisins.” She’s already proven herself adept at musical comedy. If only there were more musical comedy on TV…

Vinny Thomas, based in Chicago, used to perform with The Second City’s house improv ensemble Twisty. He recently began writing this summer for NPR’s Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me. as a guest writer.

My notes included noting he’s good looking enough and a malleable actor, whatever those things mean upon further reflection. My first impression was that he’s a stronger performer than a writer, at least based on the vignettes he selected.

Corin Wells writes for The Amber Ruffin Show on Peacock and also voices fictional political analyst Lydia Parker on Stephen Colbert Presents Tooning Out The News. She co-founded the nonprofit Squirrel Comedy Theatre with former UCB artistic director and past New Faces Character Michael Hartney.

Well, Wells already has an office inside 30 Rock so you’d imagine someone near Studio 8H might’ve been paying close attention to her already. Her opening character (seen above) featured Cupid as a member of the Black Panther Party. Other characters included Gaia Mother Earth, Curly Pitball (a precocious child actress from the 1930s who wonders why her retirement party is full of old men), and a gangster who’s really into astrology.

Woody Fu, based in New York, has previously performed overseas as a member of the prestigious Boom Chicago troupe in Amsterdam (itself a pipeline to SNL and MADtv in the past).

If Pete Davidson leaves SNL this summer, then this lanky fella could easily slide into his spot.

Andrew Knox moved to LA in 2020, after first writing and performing in four original revues for The Second City in Chicago. Knox’s other stage credits include the improvised Off-Broadway musical Blank! The Musical! and The Improvised Shakespeare Company.

Knox is the kind of funny guy you could see getting tons of work in national TV ad campaigns, or supporting sitcom characters who get big laughs.

Patty Guggenheim starred in the POP-TV series Florida Girls, and has logged screen time on ABC’s Splitting Time Together and MTV’s Mary+Jane, among various other TV credits. She’s also voiced multiple characters for the animated series Mike Tyson Mysteries and Supermansion.

How is someone with this many credits still a New Face, one might ask oneself?

New Orleans born and Brooklyn based, Joseph Lymous is a Black, queer comedian who spent the earlier part of his summer working with The Jim Henson Company and filming scenes for season two of Comedy Central’s Awkwafina is Nora From Queens.

Lymous is one to watch, and not just because he strutted onstage to begin his showcase reminding us he’s no average standard poodle! He also produced a meta bit about Brooklyn grandmothers against comedians using Brooklyn grandmothers as stock characters, which featured this fave line: “Stop buying wigs. We need these wigs!” Winner of Most Elaborate Costume Changes at JFL New Faces 2021 (a made-up award I just made up).

Aristotle Athiras previously formed a sketch group called Goatface with fellow former New Faces Hasan Minhaj and Fahim Anwar, which had scored them their own Comedy Central special in 2018. He has since directed stand-up specials for Comedy Central, Showtime and NBC. Athiras also featured in the final season of HBO’s Silicon Valley.

Also not sure how Athiras is a New Face in 2021, or even a holdover from 2020, as we should know him already, but OK, fine. His characters here were very high concept but could’ve used more fleshing out.

Kate Owens is a NYC-based actor, comedian, and award-winning clown who has performed with Cirque du Soleil.

Owens opened with a bit from her Frigid Fest show, “Cooking with Kathryn,” which let us know right away she’s willing to break as many eggs as it takes for us to notice her. She also bared her belly for a mind-reading character, and used her face as a personal canvas for a bit about Sephora. You’re not going to forget which of the characters she was!

Will any of these New Faces Characters keep the JFL-SNL pipeline streak alive?

As I wrote earlier this month, Lorne Michaels is desperate to keep the current SNL cast together through Season 50, but you’re more likely to see at least one of these Characters writing and/or performing for him instead very soon.