More than 30 years later, Dana Carvey still knows how to nail a presidential impersonation.
After the Saturday Night Live alum returned to the NBC sketch comedy show this weekend for the cold open its milestone 50th season premiere, he explained why his Joe Biden impression was “trickier” to pull off than others and how the surprise appearance came about.
“It’s been top-secret,” he told fellow SNL alum David Spade on a special pre-recorded episode of their Fly on the Wall podcast. “I’ve kept it under wraps for weeks, but I was asked by Lorne Michaels to come on Saturday Night Live … to do Biden. Because I’ve sort of casually developed — I like to take, like with George Bush Sr., ‘not gonna do it,’ I tried to do that treatment to Biden. And I did it on here with our YouTube clips, extrapolating it, making it silly and weird.”
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During his time as a cast member on the show from 1986 to 1993, Carvey was known for several characters, including his take on then president, George H. W. Bush.
“I didn’t see it out there enough, a Biden impression,” explained Carvey. “A lot of brilliant Trumps — Shane [Gillis], James Austin Johnson. Biden is trickier for me, part of the continuum of getting that high-energy part of him.”
He added, “It sounds kinda corny, but the true North Star is to try to make it funny and not really get it to be a political message, per se.”
During Saturday’s political cold open, Carvey joined fellow cast alum Maya Rudolph, who is reprising her impression of Kamala Harris leading up to the Nov. 5 presidential election. The sketch also featured Andy Samberg as Doug Emhoff and Jim Gaffigan as Tim Walz, as well as Johnson’s Trump and Bowen Yang as JD Vance.