The timing of Saturday Night Live star Chloe Fineman’s decision to leave the show did not come out of nowhere, according to Page Six.
The site reports that Fineman, 37, was offered a role in a new Netflix drama just hours before she decided she would end her seven-season run on Saturday Night Live. An insider is quoted in the report as saying Fineman made the “smart move” by leaving SNL. “It all unfolded in one day. It happened very quickly,” the source said. “Chloe went back and forth, but it was a smart move—she knew she couldn’t say no.”
According to the source, Fineman considered that new talent was taking up more space on the show. Two-seasoner Ashley Padilla appeared in 92 sketches this past season, according to Consequence of Sound, while Fineman appeared in 81. Page Six reports that Padilla is expected to be bumped up from featured player to cast member in Season 52.
The Daily Beast has reached out to Fineman’s representative for comment.
Fineman has increasingly pursued opportunities outside SNL, starring in Summer of 69 and Freakier Friday last year and in the 2024 Francis Ford Coppola film Megalopolis. She will also appear in the comedy films Love Language and The Dink this year. The star’s departure from SNL adds to the cluster of veteran exits that hit the show this past year.
Ego Nwodim voluntarily left the show in September, followed by Bowen Yang’s mid-season exit, also after seven seasons, in December. In between those departures, the show axed eight-season veteran Heidi Gardner.
Fineman wrote in her Instagram post announcing the end of her time on SNL that she was sad to leave it all behind, even though the show could be “incredibly stupid” at times.
“You sob uncontrollably when your sketch isn’t picked,” she wrote. “You storm into a producer’s 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.’”
She continued, “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.”
