History | Feature Spotlight
This year, Saturday Night Live is celebrating its legendary 50 season run. Over the decades, cast members have come and gone, creating historic TV moments nationwide almost weekly. One often overlooked aspect of the show’s casting legacy is its queer representation...albeit a limited one. In recent years, SNL has entered a queer era, with standout performances from the likes of Bowen Yang, who has quickly earned star status. However, that wasn’t always the case.
Before Kate McKinnon. Before Punkie Johnson. There was Danitra Vance.
Vance made history as SNL’s first Black lesbian cast member and the first Black woman to become a repertory player. Though she was not publicly out, her sexuality was known within the entertainment industry as an “open secret”. Vance joined the SNL cast in Season 11 (1985-1986) alongside Terry Sweeney, the show’s first out gay cast member.
Despite being a classically trained Shakespearean actor, a Second City alum, and a seasoned Off-Broadway talent, Vance was severely underutilized, often pigeonholed into one-dimensional characters. Frustrated by the limited, stereotypical Black, female roles offered to her, she left after one season. Likely the result of a predominantly white, heterosexual, male writer’s room, Vance was relegated to play roles such as “That Black Girl”, an actress who is constantly rejected because of her Blackness, and “Cabrini Green Jackson”, a teenage mother and motivational speaker for fellow teen moms.
After Vance and Sweeney departed, it wasn’t until 2012 that another openly gay cast member, Kate McKinnon, joined the hallowed Studio 8H.
Shortly after her first and only season on SNL, Vance collaborated with playwright George C. Wolfe and appeared in The Colored Museum. In 1990, she also performed in Spunk, Wolfe’s adaptation of stories by Zora Neale Hurston. Through her work in Wolfe’s productions, Vance earned an NAACP Image Award and an Obie for her outstanding performances.
In 1991, Vance was diagnosed with late stage breast cancer and transformed her experience into a one woman Off-Broadway play, The Radical Girl’s Guide to Mastectomy. On August 23, 1994, she passed away at the age of 35, survived by her family and partner, Jones Miller. For her final request, Vance asked her family to throw a “going away party” in lieu of a funeral, filled with bean bag tossing and apple bobbing.
In her relatively brief career, Danitra Vance established herself as a formidable performer and actress, bringing an electric energy to her characters while giving them both voice and purpose. Although she is rarely mentioned, Vance made SNL history, and as a Black, gay woman, paved the way for future Black, queer entertainers to follow.