Hooray for the pretty brown girls! “Saturday Night Live’s” creator and producer Lorne Michaels confirmed atleast one black comedienne will join the cast in January. Final auditions will be held today on the “Saturday Night Live” stage in New York. After two secret auditions in Los Angeles and New York, alumnae from the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, NBC University Diversity Scholarship winner Natasha Rothwell, stand-up comic Sasheer Zamata and sketch-comic Kerry Coddett are the finalists.
In November 2013, Coddett chastised “Saturday Night Live” for their lack of diversity in an op-ed piece on “The Huffington Post” and “The Atlantic.” She pointed out, in the show’s 38-year history, there have only been four black female comics: Yvonne Hudson, Danitra Vance, Ellen Cleghorn and Maya Rudolph, who’s biracial, left the show in 2007. “How long will it take for the SNL writers to learn that black is not a punch line?” she quizzes.
There hasn’t been one black comic added since Rudolph’s departure. Good move SNL!
