Bobby Moynihan Recalls Meeting Snooki While Impersonating Her for MTV’s ‘New Year’s Bash 2011’
To ring in the year 2011, MTV celebrated in the most 2011 way possible: By dropping a ball with Jersey Shore star Snooki in it as the clock struck midnight. Originally, the giant hamster ball was supposed to be dropped in Times Square, but at the last minute, the location needed to be switched to Seaside Heights, New Jersey instead.
For then SNL cast member Bobby Moynihan, however, the occasion was memorable for a whole different reason: After impersonating Snooki for more than a year on SNL, he finally got to meet her for the first time.
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“In my first year on SNL,” he tells me, “I did Snooki, and the reaction just felt different. I had got stuff on the air that was good before that, but the first time I did Snooki was the first time I said, ‘Wow, this show is nuts,’ and people were asking me about it in interviews. It was totally different.”
One of the most iconic things about the impression — aside from what Moynihan calls the “loud Italian vibes” he brought to it — was the orange makeup he used to emulate Snooki’s ever-present tan. “My bathtub was orange for a year,” Moynihan remembers. “If I see an SNL clip go by on YouTube, and I’m watching it, I’ll say, ‘I must have done a Snooki in this episode because my knuckles and the insides of my ears are still orange in this sketch.’”
As for his fateful first encounter with Snooki, he says, “I did the MTV New Year’s special with her, dressed as her. We shot it at like nine in the morning, and we started doing shots almost immediately. She was like, ‘Let’s do shots!’ — I was a younger man then.”
“I remember walking through Times Square with Snooki dressed as Snooki in the same exact outfit and her being like, ‘This is weird. What’s your name?’ She had no idea who I was and didn’t care,” Moynihan continues. “She told me, ‘I make a lot more money now, ever since you made fun of me on SNL. I do personal appearances, and now people know who I am because I was on SNL.’ I was like, ‘Good. I’m glad,’ while I was thinking ‘I’m glad you make more money than I do.’”
Moynihan says that the rest of the experience was a blur, but that he was game for whatever Snooki — or Lorne Michaels — were up for. “I was dressed as Snooki in the middle of Times Square,” he explains. “But back then, if someone had told me to jump into traffic, I probably would have said, ‘If Lorne said I’ll do it, I guess I’ll do it!’”
