Kate McKinnon joins SNL cast

“Saturday Night Live,” one of the most well-known variety comedy shows, hired a new “player” (cast member) to replace player Paul Brittain, Chicago’s representative, who was featured for one and a half years but recently left the show mid-season to pursue other projects.

New featured player Kate McKinnon recently made her debut April 7 in the episode with host Sofia Vergara from “Modern Family” and musical guest One Direction.

McKinnon appeared in two sketches that night, doing impressions in both. The first sketch, she appeared in was a pre-taped part of an impression of Tabatha Coffey in a parody sketch of “Watch What Happens: Live with Andy Cohen.”

In general, the sketch was not very funny and was not one of the highlights of the night, but McKinnon does a well-rounded impression of Coffey.

However, in the next sketch she appeared in, she shined. McKinnon impersonated Penelope Cruz alongside Sofia Vergara, who played herself in a sketch where they film a Pantene Shampoo Commercial.

Vergara and McKinnon sat on a “romantic couch,” where they made body movements and read several words on a teleprompter. All of Vergara’s words were simple and easy to pronounce on the spot, such as “hair,” “pretty” and “yay!”

McKinnon’s words were complicated and difficult to pronounce, such as “filamentous biomaterial” and “phytomorphogenesis.” All of this led to McKinnon taking a new approach to impersonate Penelope Cruz by speaking nonsense when unable to pronounce the word, which made this sketch one of the funniest sketches of the night.

In the largest sense, Kate McKinnon did an excellent job in her two sketch appearances on her debut “Saturday Night Live” performance. We can expect a lot more of her celebrity impressions to come, as she was on a sketch comedy show named “The Big Gay Sketch Show” on Logo before appearing on SNL.