It’s not often that a high school produces multiple members of an iconic television show, but Samohi has made that list this month. When Saturday Night Live begins Season 50 on Sept. 28, the blue and gold will be well-represented, as Samohi Class of 2017 graduate Jane Wickline has joined the cast as a featured player.
Making the roster alongside Ashley Padilla and Emil Wakim, Wickline now has the chance to rub shoulders with comedy heavyweights like Kenan Thompson and Heidi Gardner. Samohi’s ties to SNL date back to the 1980s, when Robert Downey Jr. attended the school for a little while before dropping out in 1982. Three years later, the future Avengers star had a stint on the sketch show.
Wickline will look to make her own legacy on SNL, something she has already done in the social media world, gaining nearly a million followers on the TikTok app and contributing to the app’s live comedy show Stapleview.
Before she was a social sensation or small screen star, however, she was an active member of the Samohi community. Wickline performed at a high level in the band program, playing the rare combination of jazz trumpet and piano, something SMMUSD Visual and Performing Arts Coordinator Tom Whaley had never seen up to that point.
"[She was a] very quiet, very cerebral kind of kid, not someone that was extroverted or someone you would think would be on a Saturday Night Live cast," Whaley said. "But I think she was very intelligent, and she was quite an accomplished jazz piano player and trumpet player."
Playing in the advanced Jazz Big Band and the advanced Jazz Combo for those instruments, Wickline also showed her talents in the Wind Ensemble and Symphony Orchestra. Her family was also in tow, helping the Jazz Combo receive event bookings and "always trying to help out whenever possible."
One of the highlights of Wickline’s Samohi career was a chance to play right next to Arturo Sandoval, one of the world’s great jazz trumpet experts. Playing a Latin chart with the legend, Whaley could tell how much the moment meant to her.
"I [could] see by her face, she’s just freaking out, like ‘I’m standing next to Arturo Sandoval, I’m playing next to him in the band!'" Whaley said.
Like Whaley, Samohi English teacher and former The Samohi newspaper advisor Kathleen Faas also saw Wickline as a lowkey-yet-dedicated student. Wickline served as the student paper’s news editor her senior year, walking her fellow students through the process of story ideas to full-fledged paper, while also dealing with paper layout via InDesign.
Faas recalled her former student’s humor as "deadpan," something other students may not have picked up on, but the advisor appreciated. While Wickline picked up heavier news items during her time at The Samohi, she also delved into humor, including an April Fools’ article about a Samohi student desperate for someone to ask him about his high ACT score.
"I think [she’ll bring] a kind of quirkiness [to SNL], which appealed to me always about old ‘Saturday Night Live,’ and a very sort of meta approach, if you will, something sort of self-aware, which I think is really effective in her kind of humor," Faas said.
Describing Wickline as a "rare breed" that was "very respected," Whaley stated that while he hasn’t seen her rise to TikTok or television fame, he likes to think the Samohi experience helped forge her on-stage path.
"When you grow up at Samohi, you get a lot of chances to perform, and so … you get the nerves out, because you have a lot of opportunities … a lot of kids would freeze, and she’s been very comfortable playing alongside famous [artists] … that probably taught her how to not be shy," Whaley said.
thomas@smdp.com
