We all remember when, a couple tv seasons ago, SNL was (roundly and rightly) criticized for not having a single black woman in its cast. Kenan Thompson said he was fed up with having to play all of the black female characters and even Jay Leno spoke up about the lack of diversity. In fact, they hadn't even had a black woman in the cast since the bi-racial Maya Rudolph left in 2007. That's undoubtedly one of the reasons they've had Maya Rudolph back many times since when they need a black female character. Well, that and the fact that Maya Rudolph's hilarious. So, I have to say, I was excited when NBC announced the addition of new cast member Sasheer Zamata in early 2014. It felt overdue and, early reports were that she was a true standout at the "secret" auditions Lorne Michael held for the position.
But, man, I'm over it. She's had two seasons now and Sasheer Zamata is AWFUL. She is completely one-note (which, in the history of this show would be okay if your "one note" happened to be at all funny or unique). She's so dull. She has no sense of comedic timing and is always tripping up on her lines. She's really dreadful. Honestly, if she were not brought in this spotlight of tokenism, I think she would have been fired by now. I have to imagine that every young, talented up-and-coming black comedic actress and improv comic submitted. Was she REALLY funnier and more talented than all of them? EOf the rest of the main ladies on the show - Vanessa Bayer, Cecily Strong, Kate McKinnon, Aidy Bryant - she is by far the weakest link. She lacks their comedic spark and their slight left-of-center nuttiness. Even the amazonian more-a-writer-than-actress Leslie Jones seems to have more range than Zamata. How'd they get this so wrong? I bet there must've been some pissed off talented black comedic actresses watching Zamata's debut and subsequent performances wondering how on earth they lost out to her. Hell, when Kerry Washington, a dramatic actress, hosted SNL she was 50 times funnier than Zamata.
Oh, and before you accuse me of being "totally alone" on this one, when I typed "Sasheer Zamata" into Google, Google's autocompleted with the top three results of what people search for and they were "Sasheer Zamata SNL", "Sasheer Zamata Michelle Obama" and "Sasheer Zamata Not Funny".