Worst I Ever Bombed: Taran Killam (Late Night with Jimmy Fallon)
updated08/10/2016 AT 03:35 PM EDT
originally published08/09/2016 AT 09:20 AM EDT
Two familiar faces won"t be returning for Saturday Night Live"s upcoming season 42.Taran Killam and Jay Pharoah are departing the long-running NBC sketch comedy show, a network spokesperson confirmed to PEOPLE on Tuesday.
Pharoah, 28, and Killam, 34, have both been with the show for six seasons and are well-known for their impression skills impersonating everyone from politicians to actors. (Pharoah, notably, is famous for his President Obama portrayal.)
Jay Pharoah (left, as President Obama) and Taran Killam (right, as Senator Mitch McConnell)
Dana Edelson / NBC / Getty
Pharoah broke his silence on the situation Wednesday with an Instagram pic of himself with Killam and cast mate Vanessa Bayer that he captioned, "My fam for life."My fam for life
A photo posted by Jay Pharoah (@jaypharoah) on Aug 9, 2016 at 10:50pm PDT
Killam spoke out about the news Tuesday in an interview with Uproxx published Monday, claiming though he signed a seven-year deal and had assumed the upcoming season would be his last, his contract was not picked up for the new season."I don"t know the other side of it," he said. "I was never given a reason why, really. I can assume until the cows come home. But I do know I"m directing this movie [Why We"re Killing Gunther, with Arnold Schwarzenegger] and I"ll have two months of post-production that would have bled into the SNL production schedule, so we kind of communicated that."
"I honestly don"t know what happened on the other side, but I do know we had expressed I have work on this film and in bonding this picture, that has to get cleared with SNL," he added. "And then [another offer] came up. I wasn"t going to have to take any time off to do it, but it was a thing that they would have had to okay."
RELATED VIDEO: Does Tina Fey Miss SNL During Election Season? That being said, while he admits it"s "always hard and sad to say goodbye," Killam said it feels like "an appropriate time.""I am so, so grateful to have been a cast member on Saturday Night Live," he said. "I set out to be on SNL and I got to do that and I did very well. And I love and adore and will forever have close ties and tight bonds with the brilliant, smartest, funniest people I"ve ever met in my life. So, I have no gripes at all. I am so, so, so lucky to have been given the time I"ve been given."
A source close to the show says that "the cast is always changing and it"s the nature of the show ... their contracts just were simply not renewed."
Another source adds that the cast is always an ongoing discussion and "they have been scouting new potential members since the summer began and that the new additions will be announced soon."
Another SNL cast member who won"t be returning is Jon Rudnitsky, reports Deadline.
Rudnitsky joined the show as a featured player at the beginning of last season and is best known for his Dirty Dancing parody skit.
TVLine was the first to report the news.
Source: http://www.people.com/article/taran-killam-jay-pharaoh-not-returning-saturday-night-live-season-42
