Melissa Villaseñor

Melissa Anne Villaseñor (born October 9, 1987) is an American comedian, actress, impressionist, artist, singer, and musician. She is a cast member on Saturday Night Live, having joined in the 42nd season in 2016. Her other credits include voice work on OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes, Adventure Time, Family Guy, and TripTank.

Early life
Villaseñor was born in West Covina, California, on October 9, 1987, the daughter of Guadalupe "Lupe" Peralta and Miguel "Michael" Humberto Villaseñor. She is of Spanish, Basque, and indigenous Mexican descent, with roots in Jalisco and Aguascalientes, Mexico. (She also has 2% Sub-Saharan African DNA. ) Villaseñor and actor Mario Lopez—whose Mexican ancestry was also explored on the same episode of Finding Your Roots—are genetically connected to director Alejandro G. Iñárritu. She attended the Catholic Ramona Convent Secondary School in Alhambra, California. At 15, she started performing stand-up comedy at the Laugh Factory Comedy Camp in Hollywood.

Career
Villaseñor was a semifinalist on the sixth season of America's Got Talent. Previously, she was selected for the New Faces lineup in the 2010 Just for Laughs Montreal Comedy Festival. She has also done voice work for the animated shows Adventure Time, Family Guy, and TripTank. She appeared on the second season of HBO's Crashing.

Villaseñor was introduced as a featured player on the October 1, 2016 episode of Saturday Night Live, alongside Mikey Day and Alex Moffat. Her debut was an impression of Sarah Silverman in the Family Feud: Political Edition sketch. She is the second Latina cast member after Noël Wells, who is a quarter Mexican, and the first Latina to be promoted to repertory status. She was promoted to the cast of repertory players in season 44. She previously auditioned for the show in 2009, where she did several impressions but was not hired.

She also makes visual art and music, and released her debut album, Dreamer, in October 2019.

She helped Rob Cantor create his viral "29 Celebrity Impressions, 1 Original Song" video to promote his album Not a Trampoline, where she sang impressions of Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Björk.

She hosted the 2021 Independent Spirit Awards, and voiced Robin in the radio drama podcast Batman: The Audio Adventures.

Villaseñor describes herself as a comedian and impressionist. She has performed impressions for America's Got Talent, First Impressions, her YouTube channel, and SNL including Björk, Owen Wilson, Miley Cyrus, Gwen Stefani, Jennifer Lopez, Kate McKinnon, Kristen Wiig, Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Ana Navarro, Natalie Portman, Macaulay Culkin, Sarah Silverman, Lady Gaga, Dolly Parton, Dua Lipa and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

After she became a cast member of Saturday Night Live in 2016, she deleted some old tweets that some viewed as racist. Most of the tweets uncovered by media publications had been posted in 2010 and 2011. SNL and Villaseñor declined to comment on the alleged racism. She described the tweets as her "trying to be edgy" and said she did not regret deleting them. In 2018, she told Weekend Edition Saturday, "I'm flawed like everyone else, and yeah, I just wanted to make sure I was perfect."