Saturday Night Live had bid farewell to one of its breakout stars of the past decade. After seven seasons of impersonating Timothée Chalamet, Jennifer Coolidge, and Britney Spears, among many others, Chloe Fineman will not return for the long-running
sketch show’s 52nd season.
Fineman joined the show as a featured cast member for the 2019/20 season, and used the Covid lockdown to her advantage as she was able to film and fine tune her impressions by herself, positioning her as star as much as a team player.
“It’s really hard to leave SNL but it does feel like the right time,” Fineman wrote on Instagram. “I’m going to miss it a lot. But the people who work there are my family and that place is my home, and I know I’ll never be too far away.”
Outside of SNL, Fineman has done voice acting on Big Mouth and The Simpsons and appeared on TV shows and in movies. Her credits include Laid, Megalopolis, Search Party, and Freakier Friday, among others.
In her Instagram statement, Fineman paid tribute to the staff including the wardrobe crew who sewed her a Jojo Siwa costume. She also echoed many cast members’ comments on just how stressful appearing on the show can be. “I’m definitely not the first to make this observation but it really is funny looking back at it all now, because at the show you get so invested in everything you work on,” she wrote. “You sob uncontrollably when your sketch isn’t picked. 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.’
“But that’s just the show,” she continued. “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.” She closed the note by adding, “And I swear to God, one day, sometime in the future, they WILL make lipstick for thicc dogs.”
Deadline notes that on her most recent season, she was the longest-tenured female cast member at the time.
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