Saturday Night Live is adding new writers to its season 50 staff (here's who)

Saturday Night Live feels more important than ever heading into season 50. The show is coming off a pretty weak season, and it will be forced to juggle the Presidential election along with the anniversary of the show's premiere in 1975.

SNL biographer James Andrew Miller claimed that season 50 will be the show's "toughest" yet, so it makes sense that Lorne Michaels and company would want to bring in fresh talent. Vulture confirmed that three writers have been brought on to make their debuts in the upcoming season.

SNL's new writers have years of TV experience

The pedigree of these writers is undeniably impressive. There's Moss Pericone, who previously wrote for Velma and Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj, as well as Carl Tart, who co-hosts the Flagrant podcast opposite Andrew Schulz. He also wrote episodes for the short-lived sitcom Kenan, which, as you can guess, revolved around SNL veteran Kenan Thompson.

Allie Levitan has also been brought into the mix. Levitan's most notable screen credit is the animated series our Cartoon President, but she also co-wrote the upcoming film Small Parts. The name Levitan might ring a bell for longtime sitcom fans, as her father, Steve, created such indelible shows as Just Shoot Me! and Modern Family. The former even featured SNL alum David Spade.

The sketch show is also losing three staff writers

The arrival of Pericone, Tart and Levitan coincides with the departures of Vanessa Jackson, Gary Richardson and Alex English. Jackson and English both worked on season 49, while Richardson penned sketches as a staff writer from 2017 to 2021 before becoming a supervisor for the last couple seasons.

Lorne Michaels is a huge proponent of switching out writers every few years, and he explained his reasoning for doing so during a 2021 interview with The New York Times. In his estimation, it keeps SNL fresh. "There have to be new people, for both our sake and also for the audience," he asserted.