‘SNL’ writer calls out sketch show: I wasn’t a cast member because I’m a ‘big plus-size person’
Paula Pell, a longtime writer for 'Saturday Night Live,' expressed her belief that her size may have prevented her from becoming a cast member. During an appearance on Amy Poehler's podcast, Pell reflected on the lack of representation for plus-size individuals in television during her early career. Despite not being a cast member, Pell had a successful writing career on the show from 1995 to 2013.
- ▪Paula Pell believes she was not cast on 'SNL' due to being a 'big plus-size person.'
- ▪She shared her thoughts during an episode of Amy Poehler's podcast, 'Good Hang.'
- ▪Pell worked on 'SNL' from 1995 to 2013 and created popular characters and sketches.
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| Original publisher | Page Six |
| Canonical URL | https://pagesix.com/2026/05/21/entertainment/snl-writer-calls-out-sketch-show-i-wasnt-a-cast-member-because-im-plus-size/ |
| Publication time | Thu, 21 May 2026 09:33:49 -0400 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-21T13:36:02.869Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-21T13:39:24.433Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | ti8-lzA22XSf |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
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Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
TV ‘SNL’ writer calls out sketch show: I wasn’t a cast member because I’m a ‘big plus-size person’ By Jolie Zenna Published May 21, 2026, 9:33 a.m. ET See more of our coverage in your search results. Add Page Six on Google Longtime “Saturday Night Live” writer Paula Pell believes she was never a cast member on the show because she’s a “big plus-size person.” The 63-year-old shared her theory during Tuesday’s episode of “SNL” alum Amy Poehler’s “Good Hang” podcast. “I don’t want to assume, but I’ve heard, here and there, little things,” she told listeners.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Page Six.
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