Playing Mitt Romney Not Enough To Bring Jason Sudeikis Back To SNL

With Mitt Romney and his new running mate Paul Ryan dominating all the political headlines, TV junkies may find themselves pondering one of the biggest questions of any Presidential election: who will play them on SNL? Romney has been spoofed by Jason Sudeikis from the moment he emerged on the national political stage, but Sudeikis has been publicly iffy about returning to the show-- and in a new interview, he says the opportunity to play Romney isn't enough to bring him back.

"To stay just for the juice of being in the public eye — of being Mitt Romney — is not enough," Sudeikis said to The Los Angeles Times, in an interview that's as much about his new comedy The Campaign his murky SNL future. Sudeikis has been on the show for 9 years, and is open about wanting more to do on the show if he sticks around:

"I'd like the opportunity to use creative muscles that ... haven't been asked of me for the first nine years that I've worked there. It could be some sort of title change. The least of the concerns is anything financial. I'm not buying a boat because of writing skits. It's more having a desire to give more to a place I really believe in.

Sudeikis, a former college basketball player, also used a a sport analogy to describe what he's looking for: "You start at 'SNL' when you're young and hungry, but I don't want my pro years to be my 'SNL' years," he said, borrowing a sports analogy. "This is me getting to play for K.U. or Duke or North Carolina, with pro-caliber people, but I don't want this to be it."

So it sounds like, for Sudeikis, the "pros" are the movies, where he's had a good run in projects like The Campaign, last summer's Horrible Bosses and 2010's Going the Distance. And if he uses Tina Fey as a model, it won't be too hard for him to take on another career while popping back into SNL once in a while to play Mitt-- Fey was busy making 30 Rock when she put in her Emmy-winning performance as Sarah Palin in 2008, and Sudeikis could probably do the same. But what it really sounds like is he wants Lorne Michaels to give him more to do as a writer, and he's threatening to leave unless that happens. So if we want to hang on to the Mitt Romney we've been seeing the last few years on SNL, Michaels needs to step up to the plate.