“Saturday Night Live” has added its first “non-binary” cast member, and no, it’s not just a return of Pat.
The long-running NBC show, which critics say is more woke than funny, announced its new lineup, and it includes Molly Kearney, who goes by “Meatbrick” on social media and identifies as neither male or female. It’s apparently not a joke, like the early 1990s hilarious androgynous character Pat, played by Julia Sweeney.
“MEATBRICK MOVED TO NEW YORK !!!!” Kearney, who uses they and them for pronouns, wrote Thursday on Instagram.
The Cleveland native recently starred in Amazon’s series remake of the Tom Hanks film “A League of Their Own,” and has appeared in the Disney comedy-drama series “The Mighty Ducks.”
Anyway, now that I don't have to tiptoe around this any more, here is the standup from Molly that I was referring to. Funny, but there's definitely a lot of "Matt Foley" in their delivery here:https://t.co/au8XZ7EkUG
— Bill Brasky (@BillBrasky2620) September 15, 2022
Kearney was one of four new cast members added for the show’s upcoming 48th season, which begins October 1, amid the departures of veterans including Pete Davidson and Kate McKinnon.
“This will be a transition year, and the change years are always difficult but also really exciting because there’s new people and things are changing, and a different generation comes into the show,” SNL creator Lorne Michaels told reporters after Monday night’s Emmy awards ceremony, where the show won the award for best variety sketch series.
While the move will likely draw praise from progressives, the show’s jokes about ambiguous gender some 30 years ago would get it canceled with the same folks. Sweeney’s Pat, a character also featured in the 1994 film, “It’s Pat,” was always sidestepping people’s efforts to identify his or her gender.
Other new cast members include Marcello Hernandez, who was named a “new face of comedy” by Just for Laughs; NBC’s “Bring The Funny star” Michael Longfellow, and comedy writer Devon Walker.
In 1985, SNL became the first network show to put an openly gay person on the air when it hired Terry Sweeney. Since then, the show has featured several gay and lesbian cast members, including McKinnon.
Rob Schneider, who starred on SNL from 1990-1994, recently said in an interview the show stopped being funny long ago. He told Glenn Beck he knew it was over when McKinnon, in her recurring role as Hillary Clinton, sang Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” after Clinton lost the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump. Despite the song title, the performance was clearly not a celebration of Trump’s victory.
“It’s not as interesting,” Schneider said. “I mean to me it’s more interesting to go against … all the great comedians go against what the mob was doing.”