TVSquad

Because he's promoting his new series 30 Rock, Lorne Michaels is getting awfully chatty these days about the goings on at his "other show", Saturday Night Live. First, he mentioned that the cast was going to downsize for creative and budgetary reasons. Now, in a talk with Don Kaplan of the New York Post, he goes one step further and says that aside from Tina Fey and Rachel Dratch, who already left to do 30 Rock, four additional cast members are about to get their pink slips. According to the article, the four even know who they are, but the names have not been made public yet. In addition, there will be auditions among the remaining cast in order to fill the "Weekend Update" hole created by Fey's departure.

According to Michaels, change like this is good for the show. "After about four years . . . there's a staleness that comes over the show," he told Kaplan. The reason why he had such a large cast last year, apparently, was because he knew budget cuts were going to be made, and he'd have fresh (read: cheap) names ready to go when it did. But some of the high priced talent, like Amy Poehler and Darrell Hammond, will likely stay on, states Kaplan, as will last year's breakout star, Andy Samberg.