SNL role a giant jump for Sasheer Zamata
The young woman slated to be the first female black cast member in years on Saturday Night Live says her life was changed after nearly being killed in a car crash.
Sasheer Zamata - a recent University of Virginia graduate who has worked with the New York Upright Citizens Brigade comedy troupe - will be on board for the Jan. 18 episode.
Toronto-born rapper Drake will be the host and the musical guest.
The venerable NBC comedy show has been under fire for its lack of racial diversity. Since its 1975 debut, just four black women have been part of the ensemble.
Since Maya Rudolph departed in 2007, there have been none.
The role is a giant jump for Zamata given that her big chance almost ended on a slab in the morgue, RadarOnline reports. Zamata says her brush with death inspired her to spend the rest of her life making people laugh.
'I began my third year of college (at the University of Virginia) in a cloud of angst,' she writes in a 2010 essay collection called Souls of My Young Sisters.
It was a difficult time for the aspiring comic. She was struggling with her roommate, her father had entered his fourth marriage - and she was confused,
'I was growing tired of the confusing, false, and superficial relationships and ... I began to withdraw from social interactions to avoid potential awkward or stressful encounters with people,' she wrote. That was when her life changed.
'I was walking through a line of traffic to get back to my dorm when a car from the end of the line sped around the other cars and through the turning lanes and struck me. I was in the crosswalk and he was driving too fast.
'I bounced off the hood, spun in the air, hit the back of my head on an adjacent car, and landed on the asphalt,' she writes. 'When I landed, I could see my bloody arm in front of my face, and beyond that, I could see the driver running to me with a terrified look on his face.'
Lying in agony in the emergency room, when Zamata awoke she said she was stunned by how many people were there for her.
'This show of love made me realize how I underestimated the value of other people,' she wrote. 'The goodness in others surpassed the drama that was depressing me. I found happiness from this event, and I plan to spread it to others.'
Meanwhile, SNL has moved quickly to put out a growing fire. The flame of racism was ignited when the two black male cast members - Kenan Thompson and Jay Pharoah - commented publicly about it and made it known they would no longer dress in drag to portray black women.
SNL turned the issue into comedy when Scandal star Kerry Washington was a guest host. Washington was portrayed as exasperated when asked to impersonate U.S. first lady Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey and Beyoncé in the same skit.
At the top of the show, an SNL producer apologized for the number of black female characters Washington needed to play that night.
Behind the scenes, though, SNL's founding executive producer, Toronto-born Lorne Michaels, was busy holding comedy showcases, searching for a black woman to join the cast.
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