For its upcoming 44th season, NBC’s Saturday Night Life has enlisted Ego Nwodim into its cast and four new writers, Variety reports. And this is coming fresh off the show’s Emmy Awards win for Outstanding Variety Sketch Series. Host for the show’s new season is Adam Driver (Star Wars), with Kanye West as a guest for the first episode slated to premiere September 29.
So back to Ego Nwodim, who is one of a small number of black women to be cast on the long-running sketch comedy series, preceded by Yvonne Hudson, Danitra Vance, Ellen Cleghorne, Maya Rudolph and current cast member Leslie Jones. A second-generation Nigerian-American, Nwodim graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in biology. But she’s had an interest in comedy and writing and acting, so she began to take classes at the UCB theatre in 2012.
Her TV credits include episodes on Living Biblically, Law & Order: True Crime, 2 Broke Girls, Adam Ruins Everything, and also starred in movies like Singularity (2017) and Galactic War Room (2016). She’s been a guest on the weekly comedy podcast Comedy Bang! Bang!, and performed in the 2016 JFL New Faces Characters Showcase and the 2016 CBS Diversity Showcase. In 2017, Nwodim wrote and performed her first ever one-woman show Great Black Women…and Then There’s Me for a sold out audience.
Nwodim’s addition to the cast is the latest in a series of tweaks after occasional low ratings of SNL. Well, hire more black women performers. As a featured player on the show, Nwodim is replacing Luke Null, who isn’t returning for the upcoming after a one-year stint. Congratulations, Nwodim! We will be looking forward to all the laughs.
