Chicago’s Alex Moffat, 2 others named featured players at ‘SNL’

Alex Moffat, a performer from the Chicago improv scene, is one of three new additions to the on-air “Saturday Night Live” team.

NBC announced Monday that the late-night institution has hired Moffat and former “America’s Got Talent” semifinalist Melissa Villaseñor as featured players along with Mikey Day, an “SNL” writer seen in the cast of summer’s prime-time variety series “Maya and Marty.”

Despite reports over the weekend that another Chicagoan, Chris Redd, was a likely hire, he was not named in NBC’s announcement. (Chicagoans, though, can see him Friday night live when Redd co-headlines a stand-up show at the Laugh Factory.)

The hires follow last month’s departures of three “SNL” regulars: Taran Killam, Jay Pharoah and Jon Rudnitsky. The 42nd “SNL” season kicks off Oct. 1.

Moffat’s arrival brings another Bill Clinton impersonator to the show that lately has been using announcer Darrell Hammond to play the former president and possible future First Gentleman. Moffat played Clinton in last fall’s Annoyance Theatre musical “Hill N’ Bill” alongside his fiancee, Caroline Kingsley Rau, as Hillary.

Also at Annoyance, Moffat starred in a one-man show, “Good Little Winnetka Boy,” and played Watson in a musical about Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper. At iO, he hosted a late-night talk show, “El Show,” and played with the teams Wonderbat and The Album.

In 2014, Moffat and Redd both were in the cast of an NBC sketch comedy pilot that ultimately was not picked up for a series.

Moffat grew up in the Chicago area and recently relocated to Los Angeles.