Every year at this time, the air gets a little crisper, teens are in classrooms instead of loitering on street corners calling you old, and Saturday Night Live adds new cast members to make up for the big-timers who have jumped ship (don't go, Kirsten Wiig! Not you too, Andy Samberg! Say it ain't so, Fred Armisen!). And every year, the new ranks are oddly unbalanced in terms of gender.
Maybe with the loss of the old SNL class, Lorne Michaels would realize that patriarchy is so yesterday and shake his belief that men are funnier than women. Nope, turns out that was just a dream I had when I took that three-hour nap yesterday. Instead, back here in the real world, it was announced that there will be six new cast members, five of whom are men. Yay for dudes! They really needed that!
But all is not lost. Despite being marginalized, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Kristen Wiig, and others have been able to launch superstar careers from Studio 8H. And maybe the token female from this year's batch of newbies can make that happen too. So let's get better acquainted with her, shall we? Her name is Noel Wells, she is awesome at impersonations, she is half Tunisian and a quarter Latina (diversity!), and her Twitter handle is RealTomHankz. In case you need even more reasons to sign up for the Noel fan club, here are a few:
Watching her Zooey Deschanel impression is like watching New Girl, only you don't hate yourself:
Watching her surly daughter from Homeland impression makes you feel better about all the bratty fits you've thrown recently (and gives you another reason to think about Claire Danes' crying face):
Watching her subvert manic pixie girl stereotypes makes you believe in something (and will lead you into a Jonestown wiki k hole):
Watching her get drunk and do her best Joanna Newsom (and Miley Cyrus and Jewel and Lisa Loeb) voice makes you feel understood and almost normal.
Check out her other videos! And catch her on the season premiere of SNL on September 28th hosted by TIna Fey, who will hopefully someday replace Lorne Michaels and make everything better.
