Saturday Night Live announces new cast members
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The upcoming season of Saturday Night Live will feature Saidah Belo-Osagie and Grace Reiter as new faces.
PHOTOS: NBCSNL/INSTAGRAM
Maya Salam
- Saturday Night Live announced two new cast members for Season 52: Saidah Belo-Osagie, a Nigerian-American comedian, and Grace Reiter, a Wisconsin native and online parody creator.
- The season will start on Sept. 26 with New York Knicks star Jalen Brunson hosting and Grammy-nominated group Katseye as musical guest; the cast mostly remains the same.
- Departures include Chloe Fineman and Martin Herlihy, while promotions were given to Jane Wickline and Ashley Padilla; previous season saw multiple new additions and other notable exits.
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NEW YORK - American sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL) announced on Sept 16 that two cast members would be added for Season 52, which starts in September: Saidah Belo-Osagie and Grace Reiter.
Belo-Osagie, a Nigerian-American comedian from Queens, New York, wrote and directed the romantic dramedy short film Tinge (2020), and created the event series Afrobeats Futura, which featured art from the African diaspora.
She also created and starred in the solo show Saidah Gets Closure. Her hiring helps fill a void left by American actress Ego Nwodim, who departed in 2025 ahead of Season 51, leaving the show with no black women as cast members.
Reiter, a Wisconsin native, starred as a recurring character on Tim Robinson’s HBO comedy thriller The Chair Company (2025 to present) and is starring in the upcoming Netflix mockumentary series Minimum Wage, for which she also wrote and directed.
Her online parody The Hunger Games (But Better), which she said she made with friends over three days, has nearly 14 million views since being posted on YouTube in November.
Jalen Brunson, the New York Knicks star, will kick off Season 52 of SNL on Sept. 26. Katseye, the Grammy-nominated pop girl group, will be the musical guest.
This season’s cast will otherwise largely stay the same, although Jane Wickline and Ashley Padilla have been promoted to repertory player status after joining the show in 2024.
The only departures announced so far are Chloe Fineman, who was known for her impressions of actress Drew Barrymore, US First Lady Melania Trump, actor Timothee Chalamet and singer Britney Spears; and Martin Herlihy, a member of comedy trio Please Don’t Destroy, who was a writer and occasionally appeared in sketches.
SNL saw sizable changes ahead of Season 51 with the addition of five cast members: Tommy Brennan, Jeremy Culhane, Ben Marshall, Kam Patterson and Veronika Slowikowska.
In addition to Nwodim, Heidi Gardner and Bowen Yang departed SNL in 2025. NYTIMES
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.