Live from New York, it’s a presidential candidate scrounging for every vote in the final days before the election. Vice President Kamala Harris made a surprise trip to New York City on Saturday to appear on “Saturday Night Live,” briefly stepping away from the battleground states where she’s been furiously campaigning in favour of the iconic sketch comedy show.
Harris departed on Air Force Two after an early evening campaign stop on in Charlotte, North Carolina. She was scheduled to head to Detroit, but once in the air, aides said she’d be making an unscheduled stop and the plane landed at LaGuardia Airport in Queens.
She was appearing in the cold open kicking off the show, her campaign confirmed, and the vice president’s motorcade arrived at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan, where SNL tapes, shortly after 8 p.m. – enough time for a quick rehearsal before the show airs live at 11:30 p.m.
Actor Maya Rudolph first played Harris on the show in 2019 and has reprised her role this season, doing a spot-on impression of the vice president, including calling herself “Momala,” a reference to the affectionate nickname that her stepchildren call her. Harris’ husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, has been played by former cast member Andy Samberg and Biden is played by Dana Carvey, who also famously played then-President George H.W. Bush in the early 1990s.
Rudolph opened the show’s season premiere with the line, “Well, well, well. Look who fell out of that coconut tree.” And she’s joked about keeping President Joe Biden in his place.
Appearing in the long-running series’s “cold open” — the sketch before the opening titles — Harris appeared as her own reflection in a dressing room mirror, joining in good-natured mockery of her laughter and playing on her own name for laughs.
The New York studio broke into raucous applause as Harris came onscreen and immediately began making fun of Trump’s recent photo op in a garbage truck, after he almost fell over as he was trying to get into it.
“I’m here to remind you, you got this because you can do something you cannot do — you can open doors,” Harris joked.
The vice president giggled as Rudolph roasted her for her distinctive laugh, which Republicans refer to as a “cackle.”
The pair got their loudest laugh though as Rudolph offered her hand to the real Harris and said, “Now Kamala, take my palmala. The American people want to stop the chaos.”
And Harris replied: “And the dramala.”
“With a cool new step-momala, get back in our pajamalas and watch a rom-comala,” Rudolph went on, and Harris interjected: “Like Legally Blondala!”
“Keep Kamala and carry on-ala!” the women said in unison.
SNL show is seen as having a liberal bent, but mercilessly mocks both Democratic President Joe Biden and Trump.
It had the Republican tycoon on as the host first in 2004 and again when he was a presidential candidate for the 2016 election, but he has since soured on the show.
Last year, he called it a “bad product, not funny, Fake News” and a “campaign contribution to the Democrats” on his social media platform.
Rudolph’s performance has won critical and comedic acclaim – including from Harris herself.
“Maya Rudolph – I mean, she’s so good,” Harris said last month on ABC’s “The View.” “She had the whole thing, the suit, the jewelry, everything!”
Harris added that she was impressed with Rudolph’s “mannerisms.”
The first sitting president to appear on SNL was Republican Gerald Ford, who did so less than a year after the show debuted. Ford appeared in April 1976 on an episode hosted by his press secretary, Ron Nessen, and declared the show’s famous opening rejoinder, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night.”
Then-Illinois Sen Barack Obama appeared alongside Poehler impersonating Clinton in 2007, and Republican Bob Dole was on the show in November 1996 — a mere 11 days after losing that year’s election to Bill Clinton. Dole consoled Norm Macdonald, who played the Kansas senator.
Then there was Tina Fey’s 2008 impression of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin – and in particular her joke that “I can see Russia from my house.” It was so good that Fey eventually won an Emmy and Palin herself appeared on the show that October, in the weeks before the election.