Whenever snow threatens, Buford Calloway's profile rises again.
The fictitious Atlanta resident appeared in a spot-on "Saturday Night Live" spoof in 2014, after a whopping 2 inches of winter precipitation paralyzed the metro area for days. Years later, the clip still resurfaces whenever snow bears down on Atlanta.
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But Buford won't be returning for a "Weekend Update" update. Taran Killam, who portrayed the gun-toting, Escalade-driving son of the South left SNL with neither fanfare nor warning.
"It's always hard and sad to say goodbye, but it feels like an appropriate time," he said in an Uproxx interview in August 2016, after his unceremonious departure. "I am so, so grateful to have been a cast member on Saturday Night Live."
He was six years into a seven-year contract when he was informed his time there was done.
"I had sort of had it in my head I would make this upcoming year my last year, but then heard they weren’t going to pick up my contract," he told Uproxx. "I was never given a reason why, really."
After SNL Killam played King George III in the Broadway smash hit "Hamilton." More recently he wrote, directed and starred in a different sort of spoof, "Killing Gunther."
In the limited-release mockumentary he plays Blake, a hitman who assembles a madcap brigade of contract killers to hunt down Gunther, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, the world's most elusive assassin. Naturally Blake also hires a film crew to document the proceedings.
Critic Richard Roeper's assessment: "Schwarzenegger has a great time hamming it up, and we have almost as much fun watching him have fun."
"I liked 'Killing Gunther' enough to recommend it," critic Alan Ng wrote. Look, comedies are meant to make you laugh. I have a low threshold for silliness, and I am a fan of the cast."
With the most recent wave of "Connecticut confetti" behind us, we're reaching out to Killam to see what he recalls of his time as Buford.
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