20 years ago. Oct. 1, 2005. Steve Carell/Kanye West. It’s the start of the show’s 31st season and they’ve just added two new cast members to the show. Someone named Colin Jost also joins the writing room. pic.twitter.com/QmyH1UPLVY
— That Week In SNL (@ThatWeekInSNL) October 1, 2025
• An golden era began 20 years ago in Studio 8H. Bill Hader and Andy Samberg joined fellow Class of ‘05 newbie Jason Sudeikis as featured players on season 31 of SNL.
• Hader, recommend to the show by Megan Mullaly, was introduced to the show as an “impressions guy”, busting out a note perfect Al Pacino in his debut episode. Hader was a game player, but would later break out ahead of the pack after John Mulaney joined the show as a writer in 2008.
• Samberg and his Lonely Island cohort were recommended by Jimmy Fallon. The trio are currently chronicling the peaks and valleys of their SNL careers on The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers podcast. It’s a delight.
• Kristen Wiig would join the cast on November 12, 2005. She would debut one of her centerpiece characters, The Target Lady, just a few weeks later on the December 3, 2005 episode.
• The tweet above also notes that thorn-in-my-side current Weekend Update anchor Colin Jost, then a fresh-faced Harvard grad, joined the show as a member of the writing staff.
• The Class of ’05 would survive a round of budget cuts that whittled down the season 32 cast to 11 repertoire players. This cast (which also featured Seth Meyers, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Fred Armisen, Will Forte, Darrell Hammond, and Kenan Thompson) is notable as nearly all of them have returned to host the show.
• Many fans consider this to be the start of the third “golden era” for the long-running series. The Class of ’05 would anchor the show until 2013, when Hader, Sudeikis, and Armisen left the show in the hands of Kate McKinnon, Cecily Strong, and Aidy Bryant.
