It’s been nearly 50 years since the very first episode of Saturday Night Live aired. Originally titled NBC’s Saturday Night, SNL premiered on Oct. 11, 1975, has since remained the TV sketch comedy gold standard.
Seven actors worked through the entire first season; they became known as the “Not Ready for Prime Time Players,” and are immortalized in the new Jason Reitman film Saturday Night, which tells the story of the minutes leading up to the show’s very first episode.
To celebrate the new movie and 50 seasons of SNL, see what the original cast has been up to since their run on the show.
Chevy Chase
The first cast member to host Weekend Update, Chevy Chase returned to SNL for its second season but left partway through. Albeit short, Chase’s time on the show earned him two Primetime Emmy Awards in 1976 for outstanding performance and outstanding writing. Chase came back to host the show eight times between 1978 and 1997.
After SNL, Chase, now 80, continued his acting career in both television and film. On the big screen, he starred in Foul Play (1978), Caddyshack (1980), National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983) and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989). On the small screen, his most notable role was on the 2010s NBC sitcom Community, as Pierce Hawthorne.
While making the 1981 film Under the Rainbow, Chase met Jayni Luke, a production assistant. After dating for two years, the two tied the knot in June 1982. This year, the couple celebrated 42 years of marriage on Instagram.
In August, the Three Amigos star became a grandfather after his daughter Emily gave birth to her first child.
Jane Curtin
Jane Curtin stayed on SNL for five seasons until 1980, taking over for Chase as the host of Weekend Update after he left in season 2. Her iconic characters include Enid Loopner and Prymaat Conehead, a role she later reprised in the 1993 Coneheads film.
After her departure, Curtin, now 77, went on to star alongside Susan Saint James in the CBS sitcom Kate & Allie. The show lasted for six seasons from 1984 to 1989. Curtin’s performance as Allie Lowell earned her two Emmy Awards in 1984 and 1985 for outstanding lead actress in a comedy series, and she was nominated once again in 1987.
Her television career continued with the hit show 3rd Rock from the Sun. From 1996 to 2001, she starred alongside John Lithgow, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, French Stewart and Kristen Johnston as Dr. Mary Albright.
In 1975, Curtin married producer Patrick Lynch. Together they have one daughter, Tess Curtin Lynch.
Garrett Morris
A musically trained graduate of the Juilliard School, Garrett Morris was recruited by Lorne Michaels to join SNL after spending years on Broadway, making him the first Black cast member on the show. He left after five seasons, in 1980.
“Some producers didn’t want a Black cast member but Lorne Michaels knew the show needed one,” Morris told PEOPLE earlier this year. “I dealt with some racism there, but never with Lorne. He doesn’t have a racist bone in his body.”
Morris, now 87, was addicted to cocaine during his time on SNL and after. Ten years ago, Morris got sober and stopped using the drug after going to Alcoholics Anonymous, he told PEOPLE in February of 2024.
After SNL, Morris’s acting career included roles in The Jeffersons, Martin and The Jamie Foxx Show. More recently, he played the Williamsburg Diner’s cashier Earl Washington in 2 Broke Girls.
Earlier this year, Morris was honored with a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame on his 87th birthday.
Laraine Newman
Laraine Newman left SNL after five seasons. Her famous characters include Connie Conehead and the Valley Girl.
After SNL, Newman went on to have an extensive career in voice acting with roles in films and TV shows like Histeria!, Madagascar, As Told by Ginger, Dawn of the Croods, Doc McStuffins and more.
Newman, now 72, married actor Chad Einbinder in 1991; they split in 2015. Together they have two children, actors Spike and Hannah Einbinder.
Newman made the news following this year’s Emmy Awards.
“F—. THE BEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” she wrote in a post to X after The Bear’s Liza Colón-Zayas took home the award for best supporting actress in a comedy. Also nominated in this category was Newman’s daughter, Hannah, for her role in Hacks.
Dan Aykroyd
Famously playing one-half of the Blues Brothers was Dan Aykroyd, who portrayed Elwood. Aykroyd was a member of the SNL cast for four seasons. In 1977, he won an Emmy Award for outstanding writing for his work on the show.
After SNL, Aykroyd reprised his most popular characters in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers and in 1993’s Coneheads, though his most notable role might be that of Dr. Raymond Stantz in Ghostbusters (1984) and its subsequent sequels. He earned a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his work in Driving Miss Daisy (1989), and broke hearts in 1991’s My Girl. More recently, he reunited with his former castmate Chevy Chase in Zombie Town (2023).
In 1983, Aykroyd, now 72, married his Twilight Zone: The Movie costar Donna Dixon. Nearly 40 years later, the couple announced their separation. Together, they have three daughters: Danielle (known professionally as singer-songwriter Vera Sola), Belle and Stella.
John Belushi
During John Belushi’s four seasons on SNL, he managed to create some of the show’s most iconic characters including Captain Kirk, the “cheeseburger, cheeseburger” owner of The Olympia Restaurant, Samurai Futaba and, of course, ‘Joliet’ Jake Blues of the Blues Brothers.
Following his run on the show, he went on to star in 1978’s National Lampoon’s Animal House and 1980’s The Blues Brothers film.
Belushi was addicted to cocaine for much of his career. In 1982, he died after an apparent drug overdose. It came as a shock to family, friends and former costars.
“John was always the guy who went a little too far and wanted to stay too long at the party,” Belushi’s widow Judy told PEOPLE in 2020. “It seemed okay, but then he got into things like cocaine and that is not a sustainable drug. People began to get concerned.” (Judy died in 2024.)
“He was one of the most intrinsically funny men I have ever known,” said fellow cast member Chevy Chase in Belushi’s New York Times obituary. “I count myself lucky to have known him.”
“I lament that he’s not around,” Aykroyd told PEOPLE in 2024. “It’s more than wistfulness: it’s a true lamentation.”
Gilda Radner
For five seasons, Gilda Rasner entertained audiences with iconic characters like Emily Litella, Roseanne Roseannadanna, Baba Wawa, Lisa Loopner and many more. Her work on the show even garnered her an Emmy Award in 1978 for outstanding performance.
Radner left the show in 1980 to pursue acting in movies. At the time, she was married to SNL band leader G. E. Smith. In 1982, Radner starred alongside her future husband, the late Gene Wilder, in Hanky Panky. The two married in 1984 and went on to act in two more films together: The Woman in Red (1984) and Haunted Honeymoon (1986).
“Gilda was the most generous and compassionate and original person I had ever met,” Wilder says in the documentary Remembering Gene Wilder. “It was so wonderful to be with Gilda, most of the time. She was so strong-willed and yet so fragile.”
Shortly after the couple wed, Radner’s health started to decline. After several misdiagnoses, doctors discovered in October of 1986 that Radner had stage IV ovarian cancer. After nine rounds of chemotherapy and 30 radiation treatments, Radner died on May 20, 1989, at the age of 42.
Following Radner’s death, Wilder helped establish the Gilda Radner Hereditary Cancer Program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in L.A. He also launched Gilda’s Club in 1995, an N.Y.C. center for people with cancer and their families to find support. In 2000, the club went worldwide and merged with the Wellness Community in 2009 to form the Cancer Support Community.
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