SNL’s First Trans Writer, Celeste Yim, Leaving Show After Five Years
“I feel so powerless to protect trans people in the world, but writing connects us, and makes us permanent, so that’s what I’ll continue to do.”
Featured Image: Photo by Lanna Apisukh/WWD via Getty Images
After crushing it in the writer’s room at Saturday Night Live since 2020, the show’s first out trans and nonbinary writer, Celeste Yim, announced that they would exit the show after the 50th season. The word comes as SNL‘s creator and executive producer, Lorne Michaels, gave hints of a cast shake-up ahead of next season.
“Lorne 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,” Lim wrote on Instagram this 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.”
“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,” they went on to say. “I always felt honored to be working within the long tradition of queer writing at the show…I feel so powerless to protect trans people in the world, but writing connects us, and makes us permanent, so that’s what I’ll continue to do.”
In 2023, Yim became SNL‘s first writer of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) descent to be promoted to Supervising Writer. They have produced over 100 SNL sketches, often involving themes of race, gender, and sexuality. The comedian is known for their sense of cultural observation, and in interviews, has admitted to being influenced by Tumblr, which cemented their cultural references.
Among Yim’s notable productions, the “It Gets Better” campaign (Dan Levy, Kate McKinnon, Bowen Yang, Punkie Johnson) has stayed on the radar, with encouraging messaging about how life can improve over time—especially heartening for young people being bullied or struggling with other challenges.
Yim always wanted to be a writer. They were born in Canada and got their first taste of comedy doing indie stand-up shows in Toronto while in college. Lim, an alum of The Second City, ultimately enrolled in NYU’s playwriting MFA program. Not long after graduation, they were at a party and heard that SNL was hiring. Yim DM’d SNL writer Bowen Yang, who told Lim to send a packet and three to five sketches. The comedy writer was on a road trip with friends in the Canadian woods when they found out that SNL had been trying to reach them. Production was already underway, and Yim thought they blew it. Then came the call from Lorne Michaels.
In posting news of their plans to leave the show, Yim expressed thanks to every assistant and production crew member and the writers—and family and friends “who love me still even though I did not see them too much.”
