Ego Nwodim

Ego Nwodim was born on March 10, 1988.^[4] She is Nigerian American, of Igbo heritage. Her cousin, English footballer Eberechi Eze, plays for Premier League club Crystal Palace and the England national football team.^[5]

In 2006, she graduated from Eastern Technical High School in Essex, Baltimore County, Maryland.^[6] She received a biology degree from University of Southern California.^[2] When she decided to pursue a career in comedy, she began taking classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre (UCB) in Los Angeles.^[7]

Nwodim was a regular cast member at UCB, where she also performed her one-woman show Great Black Women...and Then There's Me.^[2][7] She was named one of the New Faces at the 2016 Just for Laughs festival.^[8] Also that year, she performed at the CBS Diversity Showcase.^[9]

Supporting roles on television for Nwodim include Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders (a three-episode arc in 2017), 2 Broke Girls, and Living Biblically.^[7][9] Impersonating Maya Angelou, Nwodim roasted various celebrities and companies in a 2017 Funny or Die sketch.^[7]

Nwodim has made several guest appearances on podcasts such as Comedy Bang! Bang! and Spontaneanation.^[10]

Nwodim's addition to the cast of Saturday Night Live, a long-running NBC sketch-comedy show, as a featured player was announced on September 21, 2018.^[11] On September 8, 2020, Nwodim was promoted to a repertory player ahead of the forty-sixth season of Saturday Night Live.^[12]

On April 5, 2025, Nwodim was reportedly fined by the FCC following a Weekend Update segment in which her character, “Ms. Eggy,” engaged in a call-and-response routine that prompted audience members to shout an expletive.^[13] On May 17, Weekend Update anchor Colin Jost jokingly introduced Nwodim by saying "You know her, you love her [and] you got her fined by the FCC".^[14]

In support of her cousin Eberechi Eze, who plays for Crystal Palace and the England national football team, Nwodim wore a Palace shirt with Eze's name on it during an episode of Saturday Night Live in 2023.^[5][15] She wore it again on May 17, 2025, after Crystal Palace's victory in the 2025 FA Cup final.