Minnesota comics celebrate St. Paul native Tommy Brennan’s new job on ‘SNL’

Tommy Brennan, poised to join Al Franken as the only Minnesotans to be “Saturday Night Live” cast members, was never a major player on the Twin Cities comedy scene. The St. Paul native and Cretin-Derham High School graduate developed his stand-up chops in Chicago.

But hasn’t stopped local comedians from saluting his life-altering achievement.

“No one deserves this more than Tommy,” said Woodbury native Geoffrey Asmus, a regular at New York’s legendary Comedy Cellar. “Tommy is an amazingly talented and hard-working comedian.”

Kelsey Cook, the fast-rising comic who moved to the Twin Cities in 2023, was so impressed with Brennan that he was her opening act for nearly three years.

“I’m so happy for him. ‘Saturday Night Live’ is the most massive thing,” said Cook, who will tape her next TV special Oct. 4 at the Fitzgerald Theater. “He’s so quick on his feet and so adaptable. Being on the New York comedy scene now for a while has really sharpened his comedic skills.”

Brennan, 32, grew up in St. Paul and graduated from Cretin-Derham Hall in 2012. His parents, Nick and Erin Schneeman, have contributed so much time to the Catholic academy that they received its Eugene and Mary Frey Community Award in 2019.

Much of Brennan’s act revolves around growing up with seven siblings.

Brennan also likes poking gentle fun at his father, a doctor specializing in geriatrics.

“I got stitches two times on our kitchen table,” he said during at the Montreal’s Just For Laughs Festival, where he was named a New Face of Comedy in 2023. “That’s medical malpractice. That wasn’t a sterile environment. My dad just cleared off the mail and said, ‘Get up there.’ That’s also how I was conceived.”

NBC didn’t make Brennan available for interviews.

Onstage, Brennan favors preppy attire, usually wearing windbreakers you might see at a yacht club BBQ. His good looks might force the current “SNL” hunk, Colin Jost, to spend a little more time primping at the mirror.

“You kind of want to hate him because his hair is all pretty and he looks like the mean popular guy from an ’80s movies,” said Minneapolis-based Ellie Hino, who put out her first comedy album last year. “But it turns out he’s pretty much the best dude. He’s gonna be super relatable and everyone’s gonna feel like they’re watching their pal up there.”

Early fans included Louie Anderson. It was Anderson, perhaps Minnesota’s most famous comic, who advised him to write more biographical material.

“Louie was such a good mentor to me. It was amazing — sometimes I forget how cool that was, that I got to become friends with him at that point in his life,” Brennan told the Curve Magazine podcast, “Small Talk,” in 2023. “He knew that a joke about yourself or your family was timeless and no one else can tell it. That was his big thing.”

Brennan said Anderson, who died in 2022, encouraged him to fail more.

“He was a firm believer that if you’re not bombing enough it means you’re not trying enough,” he said.

Trying hard has been a staple of Brennan’s career.

While that gig has been canceled, Sisyphus owner Sam Harriman is working to bring Brennan to town during the show’s Thanksgiving break.

“This is the kind of thing all of us in the comedy scene root for and it’s crazy to see it actually happen —and to someone so deserving,” Harriman said. “Can’t imagine how surreal it feels for Tommy.“

NBC revealed Tuesday that Brennan and four others will join the cast this year, helping to fill the gap left by the departures of Heidi Gardner, Devon Walker, Emil Wakim and Michael Longfellow. More changes could be announced before the season premiere.

Several Minnesota politicians, including St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar and U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum, used social media to offer their congratulations.

“Congratulations to St. Paul’s very own Tommy Brennan on making the cast of Saturday Night Live!” McCollum wrote on Facebook. “Your city is proud of you, and we can’t wait to watch you debut on October 4.”

But Leslie Jones, a cast member from 2014 to 2019, said the freshman class shouldn’t look at themselves as being inferior.

“I never paid attention to that,” Jones said Tuesday during an interview promoting her appearance next month at the 10,000 Laughs Comedy Festival. “Everyone writes. You’re all the same.”

Her advice to Brennan and the others: Soak up everything.

“You can learn to direct there, how to cast there, all kinds of stuff,” she said. “It’s really like a college.”

Brennan’s friends are convinced he’ll be a great student.