Melissa Villaseñor

Comedian Melissa Villaseñor's gift for impressions, especially celebrities like Miley Cyrus or Kristen Wiig, made her a popular YouTube performer, which in turn led to her becoming the first Latina comic to join the cast of "Saturday Night Live" (NBC, 1975- ). Born and raised in Whittier, California, Villaseñor displayed a talent for comic impressions in her adolescence and began performing stand-up at the age of 15. She made her television appearance as a contestant on the sixth season of "America's Got Talent" (NBC, 2006- ) in 2011 and was soon a regular presence on stand-up specials and short comedy projects. Villaseñor also oversaw her own YouTube channel, which drew more than 1 million viewers, and contributed to the popular Mas Mejor comedy channel. Her vocal talents soon led to voice-over work on animated projects, most notably "Adventure Time" (Cartoon Network, 2010- ), but stand-up and sketch comedy remained her primary focus. In 2016, Villaseñor became the first Latina performer to join the cast of "Saturday Night Live," though her status on the show soon became an issue of contention when more than 2,000 tweets, many of which were deemed as racially insensitive, were deleted from her Twitter page.