Saturday Night Live

‘SNL' Announces New Musical Guest After Roddy Ricch Drops Out Due to COVID-19 Exposure

The rapper's cancellation comes less than a month after COVID-19 caused most of the show's cast members to stay home for its final episode of 2021

Roddy Ricch
Johnny Nunez/WireImage

COVID-19 is shaking things up again at "Saturday Night Live."

Roddy Ricch has dropped out as this week's musical guest due to "recent COVID exposure on my team," he announced Wednesday.

Taking the "Box" rapper's place on this Saturday's show, which will be hosted by "West Side Story" star Ariana DeBose, will be the pop band Bleachers, fronted by singer-songwriter Jack Antonoff. The appearance marks Bleachers' "SNL" debut.

Ricch gave fans a heads-up about the cancellation in his Instagram stories, writing, "Due to recent COVID exposure on my team and to keep everyone safe I won’t be able to perform on SNL this weekend. I’m working with the SNL team to lock in a new date though!"

The rapper’s cancellation comes less than a month after a spike in COVID cases caused "SNL" to air its final episode of 2021 without a musical guest, a studio audience and most of the show's regular cast members.

The episode, which saw Paul Rudd hosting for the fifth time, featured only cast members Kenan Thompson and Michael Che as well as special guest stars Tina Fey and Tom Hanks.

"Saturday Night Live" airs Saturday at 11:30 p.m. ET/8:30 p.m. PT on NBC. The show will also be streamed live via Peacock. (Peacock is owned by our parent company, NBCUniversal.)

This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:

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