God, if You're Not Up There . . . (31 page)

White House photo

I wore the white wig to play the forty-second president more than eighty times while I was at
SNL
. Although I played more than 100 different characters over the years, Clinton would largely come to define my time on the show.

Credit: Courtesy of Broadway Video Enterprises and NBC Studios, Inc.

As Phil Donahue on “Weekend Update” with Tina Fey during my first season. I had done Donahue in Spanish when I auditioned for
SNL
, and it became one of my first successful impressions on the show.

Credit: Courtesy of Broadway Video Enterprises and NBC Studios, Inc.

On the back of my Ted Koppel impression on SNL, I was invited to an event honoring the celebrated newsman at the Museum of Broadcasting. When I took the stage dressed as him, he turned to ABC president Roone Arledge and said, “Roone Arledge, you cheap bastard, if you paid me a living wage I could afford a decent rug like this guy’s got on.” It got a huge laugh. Sam Donaldson is making the rabbit ears.

As
Hardball
’s Chris Matthews. I was once on Laura Ingraham’s radio show in character as Chris Matthews along with the real Chris Matthews. You can imagine how crazy that got, with two Chris Matthewses screaming emphatically at the same time.

Credit: Dana Edelson / Courtesy of Broadway Video Enterprises and NBC Studios, Inc.

As presidential candidate Al Gore alongside Will Ferrell as George W. Bush, the Supreme Court in the background, when Gore finally conceded the 2000 election. When I studied Gore for the part, I realized that in each debate he spoke in a completely different way. I decided he’d probably had three different voice coaches. My impression combined the three. A reporter for
U.S. News & World Report
said I lost the election for Gore, which made me feel terrible.

Credit: Courtesy of Broadway Video Enterprises and NBC Studios, Inc.

When I did the first Bush White House Correspondents Dinner in 2001, I gave the new president a baseball glove. Fortified by a bottle of wine, I proceeded to do a lot of Gore material. I turned to Mr. Bush and asked, “Can I do some more of him? I worked a year to learn the damn guy, and then you beat him.”

As Dick Cheney in October 2001, the day after it was announced that anthrax had been found at 30 Rock. In the sketch, Cheney reveals his secret location in Afghanistan and his one-man mission to hunt down Osama bin Laden with the help of his “bionic ticker that monitors my heartbeat, gives me night vision, and makes me completely invisible to radar.” The real veep told Rush Limbaugh he got a kick out of the bit.

Credit: Courtesy of Broadway Video Enterprises and NBC Studios, Inc.

With Vice President and Mrs. Cheney. The Vice President invited me to his private box during the festivities at the second Bush inauguration. He introduced me to one of his pals: “This is Darrell. He’s the guy who does all the damage on
SNL
. Heh heh heh.”

As Senator John McCain, with Fred Armisen as then-Senator Barack Obama. McCain had visible war wounds, and part of imitating him would be to imitate his physical limitations, which were the result of torture, and I didn’t want to make fun of him. But my father, not knowing what this would entail, desperately wanted me to play McCain, whom he thought was a great man. In the months before my father died, he said, “That’s my final wish.” I was never able to pull it off well.

Credit: Mary Ellen Matthews / Courtesy of Broadway Video Enterprises and NBC Studios, Inc.