Grace Reiter has built a following by committing to the bit. Now she’s taking that energy to Studio 8H. The comedian, whom we named one of our Mashable 101 creators earlier this year, is joining Saturday Night Live as as a featured player for Season 52.
If you’ve seen Reiter on TikTok, you’ve likely laughed at the way she takes a weird thought and runs with it. In one video, she gives her last clean pair of underwear a hope-core edit. In another, she pretends she’s on Love Island, trying to sleep next to two Islanders who are “getting freaky.” Across her videos, Reiter uses physical stunts, body humor, and candid confessions accompanied by a jarringly icy stare. As Haley Henschel wrote in Mashable’s profile, “‘Grace videos’ have practically become their own genre on TikTok” (where she has 3.9 million followers).
Reiter told Mashable back in June that her comedy comes from wanting to know whether other people share her strange thoughts and habits.
“[My comedy] comes from a place of connection or reassurance,” she said. “Like, ‘Is this OK? … Do you guys think like this?’ And usually the answer is, yeah, I think like that. And yeah, I do that gross thing too.” That willingness to say the strange part out loud has helped her build an audience of millions across TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.
Growing up, Reiter watched YouTube parody songs and loved that their creators were “just people making shit ’cause they can.” Last year, she channeled that same creative spirit into The Hunger Games (but Better), a feature-length parody she made with friends. The project took off, racking up 13 million views on YouTube.
Reiter’s career has grown beyond her own channels, too. She was part of the live TikTok sketch show Stapleview, appeared in HBO’s The Chair Company, and performed in the off-Broadway Parent Trap parody Ginger Twinsies. She called the stage role one of her proudest recent accomplishments: “I used to believe I had stage fright,” she told Mashable. Reiter is also set to appear in the upcoming series Minimum Wage, on which she wrote and directed.
Reiter is joined by fellow new featured player Saidah Belo-Osagie, a Queens-based comedian and filmmaker whose work includes the short film Tinge, the event series Afrobeats Futura, and the solo show Saidah Gets Closure. Belo-Osagie joins SNL after a season that began without a Black woman in the cast following Ego Nwodim’s departure.
When Mashable asked Reiter at the start of the summer what she wanted to do next, her list included more parody movies, a few “real ones,” and becoming a pop star. She may not be a pop star quite yet, but she’ll get to take a different sort of stage when SNL returns to NBC on Sept. 26, with Jalen Brunson hosting and KATSEYE as the musical guest.
Source: https://mashable.com/life/grace-reiter-joins-snl-season-52
