Why Dana Carvey Didn’t Feel Like the Old Guy from the ‘80s Playing Joe Biden on ‘SNL’

The 50th season of Saturday Night Live kicked off this weekend, and predictably began with a cold open that featured Maya Rudolph plus a cavalcade of celebrities impersonating prominent political personalities. In addition to Rudolph’s Kamala Harris, we also got Andy Samberg as her husband Doug Emhoff and Jim Gaffigan as Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz, who, to be fair, does have BHPE (Big Hot Pockets Energy). 

The crowd went wild, presumably because the crowd wasn’t comprised of current cast members of SNL desperately vying for screen time. 

To cap things off, veteran player Dana Carvey took the stage and showed off his Joe Biden impression. Carvey obviously has a long history of playing presidents on SNL, largely because Lorne Michaels didn’t stubbornly insist on hiring, say, Dan Aykroyd to play George H.W. Bush.

Carvey and David Spade discussed the “top secret” cameo during a bonus episode of their podcast Fly on the Wall, which is fitting since Fly on the Wall essentially served as a testing ground for Carvey’s Biden. The Clean Slate star explained that his take on Biden was all about “getting that high energy part of him” that “didn’t come out until maybe six months into his first term, (when) they asked him some question and he got kind of mad.”

“The true North Star is to try to make it funny and not really get it to be a political message per se,” Carvey added. 

That would explain why Carvey’s Biden focus involved saying ridiculous phrases with “declarative intent,” such as “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “I can’t believe it’s not butter” and “Bed Bath & Beyond.”

Carvey also revealed that he wasn’t self-conscious acting alongside the younger performers, specifically because of Fly on the Wall. “Everyone in the cast of the cold opening has been on our podcast,” Carvey told Spade. “Once we have an hour with someone, you just feel like you know them in a different way. Saying hi to Bowen Yang and Mikey Day, (I) just know them all so much better from this podcast. And Maya too.”

“It wasn’t like here comes this old guy from the ‘80s!” Carvey added.

Even if the podcast didn’t exist, it seems doubtful that anyone would treat Carvey that shabbily. As the podcast conversations have illustrated, the current crop of cast members have a reverence for Carvey’s era of SNL. And the same goes for Rudolph, who spent her episode of Fly on the Wall heaping praise on Wayne’s World.

But there’s no arguing the podcast has clearly brought renewed attention to Carvey. If podcast listens required buying tickets, Fly on the Wall already would have made way more money than The Master of Disguise and Trapped in Paradise combined.

You (yes, you) should follow JM on Twitter (if it still exists by the time you’re reading this).