Okay! Let's Add Some Featured Players!
During Saturday Night Live 's fifth season, to help compensate for the recent departures of Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi by making featured players out of several writers---and musician Paul Shaffer. Among the "featured players" were James Downey, Peter Aykroyd (Dan's brother), Brian Doyle-Murray (Bill's brother), Don Novello (on most cases, using the nom de plume Father Guido Sarducci), Al Franken and Tom Davis, Tom Schiller (who was a filmmaker as well), Alan Zweibel, and Harry Shearer (who at midseason was promoted to the Repertory Company formerly known as The Not Ready For Prime Time Players). New producer Jean Doumanian ultimately hired five "featured players." In this case, these---save for writer-filmmaker Mitchell Kriegman-----were "glorified extras." Here is your roster for Season 6's featured players (one would be fired before Christmas, another became one of SNL 's greatest-ever cast members, three others were axed by Je...