‘Saturday Night Live’ Casts Saidah Belo-Osagie & Grace Reiter As Featured Players For Season 52

Saturday Night Live has two new featured players for Season 52: Saidah Belo-Osagie and Grace Reiter.

We were first to report on this duo being eyed for the show — first at showcases, and then at screen tests. This adds to recent SNL news which included the departure of Chloe Fineman and Martin Herlihy after seven and five seasons, respectively. Herlihy had most recently been working as a writer on the show, after originally writing and performing as part of sketch trio Please Don’t Destroy.

Belo-Osagie’s hiring comes following a season in which SNL had no Black female cast members. Producers had been looking to rectify this, per our sources, since Ego Nwodim’s surprise exit in the fall of 2025.

Sources said SNL may shoot its new title sequence featuring the new players as soon as tomorrow.

Saidah Belo-Osagie is a Queens, NY-based up-and-comer who created the event series Afrobeats Futura and solo show Saidah Gets Closure. She also previously wrote and directed the short film Tinge and is repped by Gersh, 3 Arts Entertainment, and Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz.

Generating buzz online for years, Reiter was one of the original members of TikTok-based sketch show Stapleview. Her credits include Netflix’s upcoming American High mockumentary Minimum Wage, on which she also wrote and directed, HBO’s The Chair Company with Tim Robinson, and the online parody “The Hunger Games (but Better).” Originally from Chippewa Falls, WI, she is repped by Gersh, Mosaic, and Sloane, Offer, Weber & Dern.

SNL premieres at 11:30 p.m. ET/8:30 p.m. PT on September 26 with host Jalen Brunson of the New York Knicks and musical guest KATSEYE. Other upcoming host-musical guest duos include Dakota Johnson and Turnstile (October 3), Shane Gillis and Rosalía (October 10), and Inde Navarette and Gracie Abrams (October 31). Created and exec produced by Lorne Michaels, the show is produced in association with Broadway Video.