Saturday Night Live alum Dana Carvey returned to the NBC skit show for the opening of its 50th season, where he resurrected his impersonation of President Joe Biden.
Carvey was one of several SNL stars to come back for the cold open skit on Saturday. He performed alongside Maya Rudolph as Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and Andy Samberg as her husband, Doug Emhoff. Comedian Jim Gaffigan joined as Harris’ vice-presidential running mate, Tim Walz. Current cast members James Austin Johnson and Bowen Yang played Republican nominee Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance, respectively.
The comedic actor’s surprise appearance earned him wide praise, including from former SNL writer and U.S. Senator Al Franken.
On his social media channels, Franken shared a months-old clip of Carvey chatting to him over a video call about how he nailed his Biden impression, which he has been doing for a few years.
“@danacarvey did his Joe Biden on @nbcsnl this past Saturday. He and I have been discussing it for a while. Here’s a conversation we had a few months ago,” Franken captioned the post.
In the roughly two-minute video, Carvey explained how he had different versions of Biden to match the president’s different level of energy, which Franken described as a “soft Biden and a loud Biden.”
“‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ is what I end with him, I don’t know why, it’s just that rhythmically it makes me laugh,” Carvey explained.
“In the beginning and you and I were working on this,” the actor said to Franken, “it’s like the country needed the kind of ‘friendly grandpa’ and I always mentioned Scranton [Biden’s hometown] and said, ‘My Father lost his job, no joke’. And we both thought that was just so funny. No human being, would think a guy who lost his job was a joke, but he has to tell us, that he’s not being funny.”
Carvey then explained during the 2020 Democratic primaries, Biden would often list things in numerical order when giving a speech, but “he doesn’t do that now.”
“It was very whispering and very gentle and then, at some point, the press was being a little harder on him and they were talking about, is his vigor and then he started to go from a whisperer… to be being very loud. And that was a new rhythm for me,” he explained.
The final style Carvey included in his impersonation was a “whispery” inquisition style of speaking which he dubbed, the “don’t you get it folks,” style.
“So, those are my rhythms that make me happy,” he said.
Carvey appeared on SNL as a cast member from 1986 to 1993, where he became known for his impersonations, including that of former President George H.W. Bush.
He spoke about his recent surprise appearance on SNL during a prerecorded episode of his Fly on the Wall podcast which he hosts with fellow SNL alum David Spade.
“It’s been top-secret. I’ve kept it under wraps for weeks, but I was asked by Lorne Michaels to come on Saturday Night Live… to do Biden,” he said.
“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.”
Carvey added: “I didn’t see it out there enough, a Biden impression… Biden is trickier for me, part of the continuum of getting that high-energy part of him.
“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.”
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