Maya Rudolph is a woman who has conquered a lot of mountains in her comedy career. She’s been a Groundling and an SNL star; she made millions laugh with the studio hit Bridesmaids; she even added executive producer to her resume with the TV series Loot. However, one thing she always wanted to do was do a Presidential impression in front of Lorne Michaels and her peers. Yet, she never thought she’d live to see the day.
Recently, Rudolph had a “Good Hang” with Amy Poehler on her podcast, and Rudolph opened up about getting that phone call from Lorne she’d dreamt about for years, though it apparently came after the world already thought she'd said yes. As a POC woman, the funnywoman just never thought there would be a person running on the Presidential ticket who looked anything like her.
All the years that we worked on the show, it wasn’t like, ‘When are they gonna call me?’ There’s not gonna be anyone that looks like me running for President during my time on the show. To play someone that looks like me running for President was wild.
The actress told Poehler she’s usually bullish about trying anything her peers throw at her, but in the case of playing a political figure, you really have to “resemble” the person, and she just didn’t see the moment coming in her lifetime.
I’m like you. We’re those people that can do anything on the show. Put me in coach, I want to do that. I want to do that. I want to do that. There’s some things naturally you don’t get the opportunity because you don’t resemble the person and that’s the way it is.
Then, Kamala Harris came along at a time when a lot of folks from older SNL casts were coming back to make their marks on political figures. Dana Carvey was coming back to play Joe Biden, and she got the chance to do an SNL episode with him.
What Maya Rudolph Realized She'd Learned From Dana Carvey When They Did SNL Together
in the comedienne's own words, Dana Carvey was a part of "her" cast of SNL, the one she'd grown up with and, consciously or subconsciously, emulated in her own comedy style. She was hit on the head with this truth when she finally interacted with one of her idols in person.
I don’t know how I got so lucky. It was a really exciting thing to be a part of. The other part was the Dana Carvey part. … That cast was the dream. I fell in love with so many of the cast, but him and Mike Myers and Jan Hooks and Phil Hartmann. I really didn’t realize how much of them that I took with me. And when we came offstage after that first time and Dana did something and he turned on a little sauce on the air, and was being a little goofy and having fun, he said, ‘I just like to do that. I like to make the other person part of it. And I like to have fun.’ I realized when he was saying in that moment, that was what I like to do, and I think I got it from him.
It’s always nice when this sort of epiphany moment happens, but it’s also sort of flabbergasting for me as an SNL viewer to just think about the number of things that needed to happen historically in order to get Maya Rudolph and Dana Carvey on a stage together. The end result was nothing short of perfection.
We know eventually Biden dropped out of the race, leaving Kamala as the Presidential candidate after a disaster debate that Dana Carvey said he later knew signaled his “doom.” Later, Rudolph actually got to do a cold open with Kamala Harris, a history-making TV moment. While there have been a lot more of James Austin Johnson's impressive Donald Trump impressions on the show in recent months, Maya Rudolph still sounds grateful for the opportunity and the people she got to work with during the last election.
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