NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” has added an African-American woman castmember: Sasheer Zamata.

    Zamata, 27, who graduated from the University of Virginia in 2008 and has worked with the New York Upright Citizens Brigade comedy troupe, will join for the January 18 episode, for which Aubrey Drake Graham is the host and the musical guest.

    The 137 regular cast members who have been part of “Saturday Night Live” since its 1975 debut have been mostly white and have included only four black women. The most recent was biracial* Maya Rudolph, who left in 2007. Black men, including Eddie Murphy, Tracy Morgan and Chris Rock, have been more prevalent.

    The lack of a black woman among the 16 regular or featured players became an issue this season when the two black male cast members, Kenan Thompson and Jay Pharoah, commented publicly about it and made it known they would no longer dress in drag* to portray black women.

    The show has recently been shown exclusively on the website of Sohu Video, a unit of Chinese online media group and Nasdaq-listed Sohu.com Inc.(SD-Agencies)