Doing an impression, especially a political impression, isn’t just about sounding like the person or looking like the person. Those things are obviously important, but it’s also about how you’re trying to portray the person. What are you trying to say to the audience about the person you’re doing the impression of? Well, it turns out for Dana Carvey, who recently played President Joe Biden on Saturday Night Live, that last part was very complicated.
Appearing on his podcast Fly On The Wall alongside co-host David Spade, guest Julie Bowen asked him about his Biden impression. More specifically, she asked him what it was like to play such a relevant person on SNL and whether he has any weird or guilty feelings because of how it all turned out. He took a few moments to “gather intellectually” before he gave a really interesting and thoughtful answer…
I knew that he was compromised mentally. I mean, it was obvious, but it was a delicate thing in the comedy world. There were a lot of people that didn’t want to do anything that would ding him in an awkward way. If I can make Biden funny to everyone, then I am where I want to be, and to make it funny, it had to be recognizable. So, there were certain things I did not include in my package… It was a real challenge to make it acceptable.
During his answer, Bowen shouted, “But it’s comedy” and Spade replied, saying, “You’re right. That’s the idea, but that’s not what everyone thinks.”
Clearly, the implication that Spade and Carvey are getting at is that there are some cast members and some people in the comedy world who felt there was a moral responsibility to portray President Biden in a more positive light, or at least not paint him in such a negative light that it could affect how people would vote. SNL has been accused of being left-leaning or outright liberal on a semi-regular basis since the show premiered 50 years ago. If we’re being honest, however, how accurate that is really depends more on the era you’re talking about.
I think that’s best exemplified by the three most popular impressions of Donald Trump. The first one happened before he was President and was done by Darrell Hammond. He played Trump in a very goofy and self-aggrandizing way. It was Trump as a Domino’s spokesman, a larger than life character you couldn’t help but be amused by. Trump has said publicly that he loved it, and it was a staple of the show for many years.
When Trump got into politics, however, SNL switched to an Alec Baldwin impression, which really seemed to highlight the President’s negative qualities. Baldwin repeatedly contorted his face in uncomfortable ways and used changes in vocal pitch to make his portrayal seem more unhinged and villainous. It was very well received on the left and widely disliked by some on the right including President Trump who openly took shots at it.
Now, President Trump is portrayed by James Austin Johnson who does a much more accurate, middle ground impression. It sometimes leans into Trump as a villain, but it also gives him moments of humor, where that weird out of touch billionaire but also relatable everyman quality sort of comes through. It’s a balance of what Hammond did and what Baldwin did.
If we’re being honest, I think Carvey’s impression falls into that third category and is most similar to James Austin Johnson’s. Carvey didn’t shy away from Biden’s problems and often made him look confused and out of touch. He certainly wasn’t trying to paint him as an ideal president or a paragon of intelligence, but at the same time, he also never turned the knife in the way Alec Baldwin did. I think a lot of jokes were left out because they would have come across as mean or painted him as incompetent, which Carvey always stopped short of doing.
Ultimately, we didn’t get as many Carvey appearances as Biden as were originally planned because he, of course, dropped out of the race after his mental fitness was questioned. The original plan was for Carvey to spend the Fall in New York appearing as the President during the election and aftermath, but that plan went south as soon as the debate aired. Instead, we ended up getting some of Carvey’s Biden and some appearances he did as other characters. What could have been.
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