Grace Reiter also joins the cast, filling out a class of new featured players following the departures of Chloe Fineman and Martin Herlihy.
Saidah Belo-Osagie is joining the cast of Saturday Night Live as a featured player for Season 52, ahead of the show’s September 26 premiere.
A Queens, New York, native now based in Brooklyn, Belo-Osagie is a Nigerian American filmmaker and comedian known for creating the event series Afrobeats Futura and the solo show Saidah Gets Closure. She also wrote and directed the 2020 short film Tinge and is repped by Gersh, 3 Arts Entertainment, and Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz.
Her hiring comes after a season in which SNL had no Black female cast members, a gap producers had reportedly been working to address since Ego Nwodim’s surprise exit in the fall of 2025. Belo-Osagie went through auditions held across Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago over the summer, where SNL executives evaluated more than a dozen comedians before narrowing the field.
She joins Grace Reiter as the season’s newest cast additions, marking the final casting news of the year, with every remaining member of the Season 51 cast set to return. Season 52 does not include Chloe Fineman, who announced her departure in July, or Bowen Yang, who exited mid-season in December. Please Don’t Destroy member Martin Herlihy is also stepping back from performing, shifting into a writing-only role after five seasons, and fellow group member John Higgins departed as well.
With the new additions locked in, the full Season 52 cast is set. Returning are Season 51 freshmen Ben Marshall, Tommy Brennan, Jeremy Culhane, Kam Patterson, and Veronika Slowikowska, alongside veterans Kenan Thompson, Michael Che, Colin Jost, Mikey Day, Andrew Dismukes, Marcello Hernández, James Austin Johnson, Sarah Sherman, Ashley Padilla, and Jane Wickline.
Saturday Night Live returns September 26 at 11:30 p.m. ET/8:30 p.m. PT, with New York Knicks star Jalen Brunson hosting and KATSEYE as musical guest. The season’s early episodes also include Dakota Johnson and Turnstile on October 3, Shane Gillis and Rosalía on October 10, and Inde Navarrette and Gracie Abrams on October 31. The show is created and executive produced by Lorne Michaels and produced in association with Broadway Video.