When can you stop calling a performer a rookie? Grace Reiter is going to force us to ponder that question as she flexes her comedic muscles in her first season as a featured player on Saturday Night Live.
Last week her fantastic performance in a sketch that largely rested on her abilities, helped prop up an otherwise mediocre episode hosted by SNL “bro-host” Shane Gillis.
In “Chess Tournament,” Reiter played the mother of a middle school chess competitor played by Jeremy Culhane. His opponent is played by Tommy Brennan, but it’s not the chess action that matters in this sketch that plays out as a one-on-one between Reiter and Gillis, who plays the father.
Reiter’s character and Gillis are divorced, but the chemistry between these two white-trash, lowbrow people is not fully extinguished.
As the sketch escalates, Reiter leads the way, ramping up her intensity over her son’s chess prowess, her disdain for Gillis’s new girlfriend (Jane Wickline), and the physical passion she still harbors for her ex. Gillis does a decent job of keeping pace with Reiter, who is a much more skilled sketch performer. She’s honed those skills through stage work and her own social media channels. That talent is already on display in her first stretch on SNL as a featured performer.
You could argue that Reiter is one of the three strongest sketch performers on the show, with Ashley Padilla and Andrew Dismukes, both of whom can slot into roles as leads, supporting cast, foils, you name it.
Best sketch of Shane Gillis SNL episode of Season 52
Clearly, Reiter can be physical. Not since Kate McKinnon have we seen a female cast member with her range of physicality. But Reiter is not just a buzzsaw let loose: she can embody these characters and act her way into the laughs too. In the very same episode, she appeared with Padilla on Weekend Update, where Reiter played a precocious, sly teenage daughter. Not many cast members can play two such different roles as capably as Reiter showed here.
