Chloe Fineman played countless characters on Saturday Night Live, but one of her earliest roles was as a pivotal player in the canon of Jane the Virgin.
In March 2018, a pre-SNL Fineman made a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance on the CW series that carried more weight than her three-and-a-half seconds of screen time might suggest.
For those not already in the know, Jane the Virgin followed the titular Jane, who despite being a virgin, becomes pregnant after she’s artificially inseminated by a distracted doctor, Luisa. Early on, we learn that Luisa’s mistake stemmed from the fact that the night before, she caught her wife having an affair. While the moment Luisa walks in on them is depicted in the pilot, viewers never see Luisa’s point-of-view; just a close-up of her reaction.
Fast forward to Season 4, when Jane learns Luisa’s backstory by reading a deposition. As Jane reads the doctor’s recounting of events, a flashback brings viewers back to the moment she discovered the affair. This time around, viewers see exactly what Luisa saw: her wife, Allison, in bed with Allison’s assistant.
“I asked you about her last week and you told me that I was paranoid!” Luisa cries as the assistant scurries away.
That assistant? Chloe Fineman—in her network television debut. While her character goes unnamed in Jane the Virgin, a year and a half later, Fineman was hired to join the cast of SNL.
Fineman went on to spend seven seasons at SNL, where she became one of the show’s most prolific impressionists and appeared in 135 episodes. Last week, she announced her departure ahead of Season 52, writing that while it was “really hard to leave,” it felt like “the right time” to begin her next chapter.
Watch Fineman’s complete appearance on Jane the Virgin at the top of this post.
