Saturday Night Live viewers are going to be seeing double tonight when it comes to the Vice President of the United States.
Kamala Harris will be appearing on the NBC late night show on Saturday, Deadline can confirm from campaign sources. Making an unscheduled stop in the Big Apple, the VP will be live from New York with her comedic doppelgänger Maya Rudolph in SNL‘s cold open, I hear.
Coming from stops in Georgian and a rally in Charlotte, NC, Harris and Air Force 2 landed at LaGuardia Airport around 4:30 pm PT/7:30 pm ET with no indication why the VP was there. Racing from battleground state to battleground state in the last days before this very tight election, Harris will not be in NYC long. A revised schedule from the White House has her leaving the city for Detroit at 9:40 pm PT/12:40 pm ET. The Veep has events on Sunday in Motor City and more.
No word if the real life Gov. Tim Walz, President Joe Biden, Sen JD Vance (R-OH) or past SNL host Donald Trump will be showing up too Saturday on the fifth show of the NBC later-nighter’s 50th season , but 30 Rock is packed with Secret Service right now, I’m told. It is pretty certain that from Dana Carvey’s side splitting performance as the current POTUS and other SNL cast members stepping in as the candidates in what is sure to be a politics packed episode tonight.
Long a self-professed fan of Rudolph’s Emmy winning portrayal of her, the VP is joining a very long tradition of White House residents and hopefuls walking on Stage 8H.
There was President Gerald Ford’s pre-filmed cameo in 1975, Arizona Sen. John McCain’s 2002 hosting stint and subsequent walk-ons, and then Illinois Sen. Barack Obama‘s blink and you’d miss him 2007 appearance. Both Trump and Hillary Clinton showed up 2015, with the former’s hosting gig drawing a lot of heat for the Lorne Michaels run SNL. Of course, real life DC power players aside, perhaps the most famous, or infamous, of all the SNL impressions of top tier politicians was Tina Fey‘s Sarah Palin. To that, the appearance of the actual then Alaska governor and GOP VP nominee in the last weeks of the 2008 was a meta masterclass – if not for the side glance Palin and Fey gave each other as they crossed the stage.
As you can see:
John Mulaney is back hosting SNL tonight, his fifth time as the sketch show frontman. Having said that, with charttopper Chappell Roan as the musical guest, the real motivation of the VP’s visit may be just a little clearer.
