SNL will set a record with 20 cast members this fall, yet none will get to play a presidential candidate

Paste Magazine

Since all of the 17 cast members from last season are returning, joining three new featured players, Saturday Night Live will have its largest-ever cast with Season 46. Yet even with six white guys in the cast, Lorne Michaels is having Alec Baldwin again play President Trump and Jim Carrey taking on the role of Joe Biden. "Remember how Dan Aykroyd kept coming back in 1988 to play George Bush during the election?" says Garrett Martin. "Or when Tom Hanks would pop up as Bill Clinton in 1992? Right, you don’t, because that never happened. Back then SNL’s cast actually got to star on SNL, and not just pop up in the background or squeeze in between whatever famous people drop by that week. I have no idea if anybody on the show today could be half as good at Biden as Dana Carvey was as Bush or Phil Hartman was as Clinton, but it could make for a more interesting show if they had the chance." Martin adds that with a cast of 20, "almost all of them will be shut out of the major roles in the sketches that are guaranteed to be opening every episode this season. That’s, y’know, weird. And dumb. Probably bad, even. Huh."