New York, NY — “We are delighted by Saturday Night Live‘s announcement that Sasheer Zamata will be joining the cast as a featured player.

Zamata is a talented comedian and we congratulate her on seizing this great opportunity.

Just before the holidays, ColorOfChange sat down with NBCUniversal executives to discuss SNL’s failure to address the exclusion of Black women from the influential show, as well as share our members’ concerns about the misleading stereotypes too often used to marginalize and dismiss Black people on television and across our media landscape.

SNL‘s attention to this issue — including the decision to hold nationwide mid-season auditions — is an important step. We’d like to thank NBCUniversal for hearing our community’s concerns.

ColorOfChange looks forward to Sasheer Zamata’s debut episode, and to continued dialogue with network executives to ensure that she has the support she needs backstage to be successful on screen.”

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With more than 900,000 members, ColorOfChange.org is the nation’s largest online civil rights organization.