Saturday Night Live gets new black comic for its new season

The new season of SNL brings Ego Nwodim, a new young African-American comic to the stage

 

Comedienne Ego Nwodim has secured a spot as a new cast member on the NBC staple, Saturday Night Live which returns for its 44th season on Sept. 29, Variety reports.

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According to Variety, Nwodim is a University of Southern California grad who was a regular cast member at the UCB Theatre in Los Angeles. She performed her one-woman show, “Great Black Women … and Then There’s Me” at the theater. She’s also garnered screen time in 2017’s “Singularity” and the streaming-video series “Galactic War Room.”

The Season premiere will be hosted by “BlacKkKlansman” star Adam Driver and musical guest Kanye West. The long-running show is also adding to its writing roster, Alan Linic, Alison Gates, Eli Mandel and Bowen Yang.

Change is good, for some

SNL has had quite a year with the popular skits about Donald Trump and even Tiffany Haddish making history as he first black female comic to host the NBC ling-running show.

With cast changes being the normal flow of how things go, one thing is for sure, cast member Kenan Thompson said recently he’s there to stay.

Thompson, 40, opened up to Deadline about his 15-year stint on SNL, earning him the accolade of becoming the longest-running cast member in the show’s history. Surely Thompson has an employee of the “years” plaque hanging somewhere around Studio 8H.

The former Nickelodeon star has made a name for himself making fun of our favorite people like his Family Feud skits as a loud and animated caricature of Steve Harvey, and the hit Black Jeopardy parody and the ridiculous personal fave “What Up With That?”. (How about the guy who randomly does the running man, for no reason, in that skit. Funny stuff for sure.)

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So, what exactly is Thompson’s career plan moving ahead, because we all know all good things come to an end.

“I would love to take the Tom Hanks approach,” he laughs. “Do a bunch of comedy and then turn into the biggest movie star ever. That would be so awesome.”

We can dig it.

The new dad also said he would love to have his own production company, and perhaps crossover into dramatic film.

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