Saturday Night Live has done it again, plucking a “New Face” from Montreal’s Just For Laughs in July to join its cast come September, hiring stand-up comedian Jon Rudnitsky as a featured cast member for Season 41, which actually begins in October.
NBC confirmed the hire Monday to The Comic’s Comic.
Previous “New Faces” hires by SNL over the past few seasons have included Pete Davidson, Brooks Wheelan and John Milhiser.
Rudnitsky was included in this summer’s “New Faces” lineups, and placed at the end of the order for a show-stopping number that could just as well have fit in with the “Characters” showcases. As I wrote then, he “earned an applause break for his ultimate act-out fan fiction interpretative dance to Dirty Dancing’s ‘Time of My Life.'”
Befitting a potential new SNL cast member, he most recently appeared in a video parody of new hit movie Straight Outta Compton called Straight Outta Newport:
In 2012, Rudnitsky delivered a speech at his own commencement from the USC School of Theater. Roll it!
Here’s his self-described bio:
Born and raised in the suburbs of Jersey, Jon spent most of his childhood/teenage years performing in musicals (not getting laid) and doing open mics at The Comic Strip in NYC. He studied in USC’s BFA Acting Conservatory program where he was given the John Ritter Memorial Award For Outstanding Comic Performance and was chosen to be the BFA Commencement speaker. Jon won the Laugh Factory’s Laugh Bowl College Comedy Competition. And has made several viral YouTube parodies including House Of Cards Junkie (featured on Variety and The Sundance Channel’s The Writers Room), True Detective Oscars Parody (featured on Huffington Post and Buzzfeed), #Selfie Parody #Dickpic (featured on Elite Daily) and The Jewish Hunger Games (featured on Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, Time, CBS News, and NY Magazine). Jon was recently selected as one of the New Faces at the Just For Laughs Comedy Festival in Montreal. Jon performs stand up comedy at clubs, colleges, casinos, and laundromats around the country featuring for Andrew Santino, Steve Byrne, Adam Ray, Julian McCullough, Brent Morin and other major headliners. He recently had his TV debut on CBS’s Criminal Minds where he had two lines and then was pistol whipped in the face – solidifying his classical theatre training and his family’s doubts about pursuing a career in entertainment in one fell swoop.
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