It only took 42 years, but Saturday Night Live finally hired a Latina! Melissa Villaseñor made her SNL debut this weekend and she did not disappoint. The 28-year-old comedian was a finalist from season 6 of America’s Got Talent where she wowed the judges with her impressions. Julio Torres, another Latino comedian was also hired as a full-time writer amid complaints regarding the show’s lack of diversity.
“SNL is one of the main reasons why I started comedy at 15 and I pray to be there someday when I am ready,” she wrote on her Facebook page back in 2009 when she first auditioned. It just shows that even if you don’t get a “yes” right away, don’t give up and keep working towards your goal. Villaseñor does killer impressions of Jennifer Lopez, Christina Aguilera, Natalie Portman and many others. She’s also done work for Family Guy, Cartoon Network, and headlined at hundreds of clubs across the country.
SNL came under fire when Donald Trump made demeaning comments about Latinos, highlighting the lack of representation in the show. “When you looked at ‘SNL’ and the representation in front and behind the camera, it just magnified the situation,” said Axel Caballero, the executive director for the National Association of Latino Independent Producers (NALIP).
“It shows that we’re making progress and that we are an important community that cannot be disregarded,” he told the outlet. “This is an area that is undeveloped and underrepresented — Latinas in comedy. … If Melissa does well, there will be a demand for more. It will open doors for others,” said Felix Sanchez, chairman of the National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts to Fox News Latino.
Latino writer Julio Torres also made the cut, making history as the first open gay man to be a lead writer for SNL. “I’ve never been good or too interested in making jokes about or having material about being Latino or being gay or any of those things. They’re very much part of who and what I am, but I feel like the one sort of label that I do feel a strong creative connection with — because I do feel a connection with the other two in other ways — but creatively what I do feel connected to is the idea of being from elsewhere,” said Torres, who’s starred in the digital web series Más Mejor, which was started by two other former Latino SNL writers, Fred Armisen and Horation Sanz.
There’s no question that these two are uber-talented individuals, and the announcement couldn’t have come at a better time, especially since we’re still celebrating Hispanic heritage month.