Empire's Taraji P. Henson will be just the 10th black woman to host Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live announced its April lineup of hosts on Thursday, and despite spoofing Fox's hit show Empire earlier in March, it's showing some love to at least one of the series' stars.
Taraji P. Henson is slated to lead the show on April 11; her hosting duties will move the number of black women who have headlined SNL into the double digits — she'll be the 10th black woman to host, out of more than 500 performers to take on the role over the last four decades.
Fusion broke down the hosts to appear on SNL as follows: 311 white men; 154 white women; and 41 black men. As underrepresented as that makes Henson and her fellow black female hosts, they still outnumber the whopping three hosts of Asian descent (Jackie Chan, Lucy Liu, and Bruno Mars).
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Sarah Eberspacher is an associate editor at TheWeek.com. She has previously worked as a sports reporter at The Livingston County Daily Press & Argus and The Arizona Republic. She graduated from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.
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