Saturday Night Live Loses Head Writer to New Freeform Series
Across the decades that Saturday Night Live has been on the air, creatives in front of and behind the camera have gone on to have careers in other domains. As a new post reveals, one of the series' current head writers, Anna Drezen, will soon join that list. As Drezen revealed in a social media post on Wednesday, she will be departing the show in the middle of its current 47th season, in order to focus on her upcoming Freeform series, Praise Petey. Drezen has been writing on Saturday Night Live since 2016, and was promoted to head writer last year. She's also served as a writer on Peacock's Girls5Eva.
"Bye SNL! I am leaving the show to focus on my show at Freeform," Drezen writes. "Was going to post a joke but I don't do those anymore. I learned a lot. Got to meet a lot of animals and people. There is nowhere like it. Lotta pressure to pick the right pictures to represent 5.5 years and this is what I came up with, how'd I do?"
The animated series Praise Petey follows Petey, a New York City "it" girl who has it all until her life comes crashing down around her, but a mysterious gift from her father lifts things up a bit: she's going to "lean into" modernizing his small-town cult. Drezen is creator, writer and executive producer and will EP alongside Monica Padrick, Mike Judge, Greg Daniels, Dustin Davis, and ShadowMachine's Alex Bulkley and Corey Campodonico. The cast include Schitt's Creek's Annie Murphy as Petey, Cowboy Bebop's John Cho as Bandit, The Good Fight's Christine Baranski as White, and The Flash's Kiersey Clemons as Eliza.
"I can't believe I get to make this show with so many funny and smart people," Drezen said in a statement when the show was first announced. "Getting to work with Monica, Bandera, Freeform, ShadowMachine, 20th Television Animation and this amazing cast has been a blast and dream – a bleam. This rules."
"It's kind of the A-team. It was a spec script that we bought and Annie Murphy got attached early on," Jamila Hunter, Freeform's EVP of Programming and Development, added. "We've had such a great opportunity to attract talent because Anna [Drezen' is so incredibly funny and smart. Animation has a great opportunity to be funny and thought provoking. That's what we love about it."
Praise Petey is expected to begin production in early 2022.
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