Celeste Yim Made Trans History on SNL. Now They Are Leaving

“I always felt honored to be working within the long tradition of queer writing at the show.”

Celeste Yim, the first out nonbinary writer for Saturday Night Live, announced they are leaving the show this week after five years.

Yim, who was hired as an SNL staff writer in 2020 and promoted to writing supervisor in 2023, announced their decision to leave the show after its 50th season in an Instagram post late Sunday night.

“Lorne [Michaels] hired me over the phone when I was 23 and the job literally made all of my dreams come true BUT it was also grueling and I slept in my office every week BUT my friends helped me with everything BUT I got yelled at by random famous men BUT some famous girls too BUT I loved it and I laughed every day and it’s where I grew up,” Yim wrote in the post.

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“I hate when other people say this but it’s true that I was the first ever out trans person to be a writer for SNL,” the scribe wrote. “I always felt honored to be working within the long tradition of queer writing at the show,” Yim added, joking that “Chevy [Chase] is nonbinary!” (Chase was a cast member and hosted Weekend Update in the first season of the long-running series.) Yim also vowed to keep writing comedy in the face of anti-trans oppression. “I feel so powerless to protect trans people in the world but writing connects us and makes us permanent, so it’s what I will continue to do,” they wrote.

Yim wrote numerous iconic SNL sketches during their tenure on the show, perhaps most memorably their sendup of the “It Gets Better” project in 2021 (featuring Kate McKinnon and an iguana). They were also behind the delightfully surreal L’Eggs parody, and often partnered with Bowen Yang on material like Yang’s Weekend Update monologue about anti-Asian hate crimes.

“Thank you Bowen for changing my life and for making me feel normal,” Yim wrote on Instagram this week. (Yim also recently wrote for Yang and Matt Rogers’ Las Culturistas Awards, held earlier this month.) Their statement also thanked “every SNL assistant and production crew member who ever made any part of anything I ever wrote.”

Yim’s time on SNL saw an influx of queer and nonbinary cast members like Molly Kearney and Punkie Johnson, both of whom have since left the show. At the same time, SNL also earned backlash from LGBTQ+ viewers by inviting hosts like Shane Gillis and Dave Chappelle, both of whom have made homophobic and transphobic comments on stage; when Chappelle hosted SNL in 2022, a nonbinary writer — widely believed, but not confirmed, to be Yim — asked to sit out for the week, after which Chappelle made a joke calling the writer “a they” during dress rehearsal (which did not appear in the final show).

“Thank you to my family and friends who love me still even though I did not see them very much,” Yim wrote in their departure announcement. “And thank you all for your support. For writing to me and for wearing my sketches as Halloween costumes. […] I try to imagine my younger self learning about me. I would be amazed. But then I’d be like…Wait, why are you dressed like that…”

Yim’s comments were full of current and former SNL cast members and writers expressing wholehearted support, including Yang, Ego Nwodim, and Jane Wickline, as well as non-SNL celebs like Padma Lakshmi, Jeremy O. Harris, and Ziwe.

“My baby,” cast member (and L’Eggs icon) Aidy Bryant wrote simply, summing it up.

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