Dana Carvey Was Concerned About Taking Joe Biden Away From Current ‘SNL’ Cast Members

While playing presidents and high-profile candidates on Saturday Night Live was once exclusively the domain of SNL cast members, in recent years, zeitgeist-y political roles have tended to go to a revolving door of A-list celebrities, including Alec Baldwin, Jim Carrey and Robert De Niro. This trend has gone on for so long that it’s become the expected norm that newsworthy politicians will be played by celebrity ringers, as opposed to in-house talent.

But Lorne Michaels’ strategy has led to some hurt feelings. Darrell Hammond technically wasn’t a part of the cast when Donald Trump entered the political arena, but he was still kicking around Studio 8H in his capacity as announcer, and was tapped to reprise the role of Trump, who he’d already impersonated in previous seasons.

But when Hammond was swapped out for Alec Baldwin during Trump’s presidency, the comedian was reportedly crushed and “just started crying” upon receiving the news.

In retrospect, an appreciation for the comedy stylings of Darrell Hammond may be the one thing Trump has ever been vaguely right about. 

The latest batch of election season guest stars has included Maya Rudolph as Kamala Harris (which was no surprise) as well as Andy Samberg as her husband Doug Emhoff, and Jim Gaffigan as Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz. Meanwhile James Austin Johnson was only able to hang onto his Trump gig because Shane Gillis — the guy who was fired from the show for his history of using racial slurs and homophobic epithets — reportedly turned Michaels down. 

Also in the mix: SNL veteran Dana Carvey is now playing Joe Biden — at least for the next few weeks. 

But as a former cast member himself, Carvey was very cognizant of the fact that he might be taking screen time away from a current SNL performer, specifically Mikey Day, who played Biden last season.

As Carvey revealed on this week’s episode of Fly on the Wall, Michaels first asked him to play Biden back in June, when the current president was still running for re-election. “You’ll come in, it’s autumn in New York, it’s four shows, and you’ll really, really have fun,” Michaels told the Master of Disguise star.

But Carvey, who’s not a complete monster like some members of the Baldwin family who shall go unnamed, reached out to producer Steve Higgins, just to make sure that this idea was cool with Day. “I asked Steve Higgins, ‘Does (Mikey Day) still want to play Biden?’ He said Mikey would be relieved,” Carvey explained. “I hope that’s true.”

While Day has yet to publicly comment on Carvey taking over for him, presumably he has his hands full right now crafting the future nightmare fuel that is the CGI-live action hybrid Rugrats movie.

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