Lorne Michaels Begged Jimmy Fallon Not to Write the Original ‘SNL’ MIrror Sketch

Despite Lorne Michaels’ previous promise that no real-life political candidates would show up on SNL this election season, Vice President Kamala Harris popped by Studio 8H on Saturday night, appearing in a cold open opposite Maya Rudolph’s Kamala, playing her literal mirror image. 

While this one-off cameo seems unlikely to have much of an impact on Election Day, Trump supporters have been raging about the sketch online, suggesting that Trump himself is now owed airtime due to the FCC’s equal time fairness rules (although this was seemingly resolved by a NASCAR ad). They’re also complaining that Harris “plagiarized” an earlier sketch starring Trump.

It’s true that back in 2015, Trump and Jimmy Fallon performed a similar mirror bit, in which Fallon-as-Trump teed up the presidential candidate for jokes that also served to promote his campaign talking points (never forget Fallon’s role in this national nightmare), but it aired on The Tonight Show, not SNL. 

And it didn’t originate with Trump. Just a few months before Trump guested, Fallon performed the same bit with noted laugh riot Mitt Romney. 

But the sketch actually dates all the way back to an SNL episode from December 2001, and it starred Fallon and Mick Jagger, who, I’m pretty sure wasn’t running for president at the time.

Oddly enough, the sketch’s premise, which is now the subject of a major political news story, was thrown together at the last minute. Jagger was the episode’s musical guest (Hugh Jackman was the host). As Fallon revealed on The Dan Patrick Show earlier this year, it was written on the Friday night before the show aired, and it only came about because Michaels suggested that Fallon should pitch some sketch ideas to Jagger.

But Fallon’s first suggestion didn’t go over well with his boss. “Before the meeting, I said to Lorne, ‘Maybe I’ll do an impression of Mick in the mirror, I’ll be his reflection,’” Fallon recalled. “Lorne goes, ‘Please don’t do that, that’s been done so many times.’”

Michaels was right; the idea was older than Mick Jagger himself. It was basically a riff on the classic Marx Brothers routine from Duck Soup, which was subsequently copied by countless TV shows ranging from I Love Lucy to Donny & Marie.

So when Fallon met with the Rolling Stones frontman, he threw out a number of other ideas, including the two of them “working at a Sunglass Hut together” and a sketch where they played clones of Keith Richards. But those didn’t go over well. Judging from John Mulaney’s story about pitching sketches to Mick Jagger, he probably didn’t hide his distaste either.

Eventually, out of “desperation,” Fallon offered up the mirror idea, which Jagger loved. “So I had to go into Lorne’s office and say, ‘Good news and bad news. Good news: He wants to do a sketch. Bad news: We’re doing the reflection in the mirror,’” Fallon explained. 

Luckily, the sketch, which was only rehearsed once, absolutely killed — which is presumably why Michales and Fallon have continued to beat this horse that Michaels declared dead over two decades ago.

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