Saturday Night Live is a leading entertainment institution that has a track record of finding the next big thing for comedy in America.
Bill Murray and Eddie Murphy, Kristen Wiig, Will Ferrell, and Kristen Wiig were all given big breaks and have gone on to be great stars on the big screens.
Although Aristotle Athari and Sara Sherman are not yet among the list, they have joined the SNL cast to host its new season. Owen Wilson will host.
Johnson is the most popular of the three new names. Johnson’s impressions of Donald Trump were a big part of the 2020 election campaign, and many of them went viral.
We’ve all seen numerous comedians and actors attempt their own impressions of the notorious former president, with Alec Baldwin being the most notable to date, but let us tell you, Johnson blows Baldwin’s Trump out of the water.
Whereas Baldwin managed to perfect the mannerisms of Trump, you could say that the voice and speaking weren’t always on point. This isn’t the case with Johnson, who has got Trump’s raspy New Yorker scowl and breathing down to a tee as well as the controversial MAGA-leader’s habit of repeating himself during sentences.
However, possibly the best part of Johnson’s take on Trump is that he barely talks about politics at all thus avoiding promoting Trump’s toxic rhetoric.
Johnson makes Trump look more cartoonish than ever by making him go on seemingly interminable rants about pop-culture. Scroll through Johnson’s Instagram page and you’ll see ‘Trump’Talking about Weird Al Yankovic and hyperpop groups 100 Gecs, Scooby-Doo, Pokemon, to name a few.
It’s in these videos in which the genius of the impression comes to the fore as we are reminded of just how incoherent and off-tangent Trump’s speech became towards the end of his presidency.
Perhaps Johnson’s best Trump video is a teary-eyed ‘Trump’Cover of radio rock classic from 1990s ‘Closing Time’Semisonic. A fitting end to Trump’s reign.
Speak to Vanity Fair in November, Johnson, who began his stand-up career in Nashville, Tennessee as a teenager, admitted that he got better responses from audiences when he wasn’t “openly racist and homophobic as Trump”Or “repeating what Trump said or heightening it .”
Johnson stated in the same interview that Trump is a rally-mode candidate. “not written out, and he’s not rehearsed”Add: “I tend to hover around Rally Trump, and there’s absolutely no rehearsal there. I pick a pop-culture topic, usually something that is an actual opinion I actually hold.”
This is actually a better way to ridicule Trump. We can laugh at his speech patterns and the fact that he has such passionate opinions. Super Mario.
SNL won’t be Johnson’s first time on television. He appeared in March as a full-fledged Trump, which was very disconcerting.
An interview with YouTube music critic Anthony Fantano, Johnson revealed that doing the Trump voice has taken a toll on his own vocal cords so let’s hope he can mix things up in his new gig on SNL. Johnson’s other voices include Joe Biden, so he won’t be short of material.
Johnson’s recruitment to the SNL cast might have come 12 months too late for him as, by now, he’d possibly already be a huge star thanks to his impersonation. SNL will still have a huge Trump card if Trump declares that he is running again in 2024.