Saturday Night Live added two new SNL cast members for Season 52, bringing in Saidah Belo-Osagie and Grace Reiter as featured players. The move gives the show a fuller ensemble heading into its September 26 premiere, and it follows a season in which there were no Black female cast members.
Season 52 on September 26
September 26 is the date that matters for the new hires, because that is when Saturday Night Live returns at 11:30 p.m. ET and 8:30 p.m. PT. Jalen Brunson of the New York Knicks is set to host, with KATSEYE as musical guest, giving the premiere a clean launch point for the new lineup.
Friday is also in play behind the scenes: the show may shoot its new title sequence featuring the new players as soon as tomorrow. That puts Belo-Osagie and Reiter into the front-facing part of the rollout before the season even starts, which is the fastest way for a featured player hire to become visible to viewers.
Grace Reiter from Stapleview
Grace Reiter arrives with a digital-sketch background that fits the show’s current talent pipeline. She was one of the original members of the TikTok-based sketch show Stapleview, and her credits also include Netflix’s upcoming American High mockmockumentary Minimum Wage, which she wrote and directed, plus HBO’s The Chair Company with Tim Robinson and the online parody The Hunger Games (but Better).
Saidah Belo-Osagie brings a different lane. She created the event series Afrobeats Futura and the solo show Saidah Gets Closure, and she previously wrote and directed the short film Tinge. For a show that rotates between new voices and established performers, that kind of mixed writing-and-performing background gives the Season 52 additions more utility than a simple on-camera hire.
Turnover after five seasons
Chloe Fineman left after seven seasons and Martin Herlihy departed after five, with Herlihy most recently working as a writer after first writing and performing as part of Please Don’t Destroy. Those exits, combined with Ego Nwodim’s surprise exit in the fall of 2025, left Saturday Night Live with a gap producers had been trying to address.
The sharpest pressure point was representation: the show had no Black female cast members last season, even though producers had been looking to fix that after Nwodim’s departure. Belo-Osagie’s addition directly answers that problem on paper, while Reiter broadens the show’s comedy bench at the same time.
Season 52 now opens with a clearer cast shape, and the next practical question is simple: whether Belo-Osagie and Reiter will appear in the title sequence when the premiere airs on September 26. If the sequence is shot as soon as tomorrow, viewers should expect the new hires to show up immediately, not after a slow introduction period.
