Dana Carvey is recalling his experience with Kamala Harris during her Saturday Night Live appearance last week, including her reaction to his Joe Biden impression.
The comedian, who has been playing the president during the NBC sketch comedy show’s 50th season, said on his Superfly podcast with David Spade that he had a brief interaction with the vice president after her 90-second cameo alongside her impersonator, Maya Rudolph.
“She’d done the cold opening and it was a very — whatever your political thing is, it was a very human moment, the way the audience, the emotion of the audience for her in that studio for about two minutes, couldn’t help but kind of well you up,” Carvey recounted. “I mean, it just was sort of emotional.”
Carvey added that Harris’ team later requested a photo with him since he was still dressed as Biden at the time.
“And then she’s down in Maya’s dressing room, her people go, ‘Oh, take a picture,’ because I was still dressed as Biden,” he said. “And then I came in and she kind of went, ‘Hey,’ and so I had about a minute face-to-face with her and I just did all my Biden hooks. ‘No, I’m not kidding. I’m being serious.’ She laughed so hard. She was bent over laughing”
“That was kind of interesting,” the comedian said of her reaction as Harris has been one of the closest people to the president in recent years. “I guess she sees all of this from a different point of view. But it seemed cathartic or something. I don’t know. People seem to like it.”
Looking back at the atmosphere behind the scenes at SNL prior to Harris’ arrival on Saturday, Carvey said Studio 8H was filled with excitement.
“It was all very, just ‘When is she coming? How is she coming?’” he recalled. “There’s a tension and a sensitivity going on, a quietness. It was like an exotic tiger was coming. ‘When is Kamala coming?’ And she comes in and she turns and she gets a huge smile on her face, looks all around [Studio] 8H and goes, ‘Oh, [if] my mother could see me now.’ And then kind of under her breath, she goes, ‘Of course she’s seeing me now.’”
During Saturday’s SNL cold open, Harris made a surprise appearance, appearing opposite Rudolph. The two women did a sketch where it appeared like they were talking to each other through a mirror.
