On “The View,” Kamala Harris gave a live reaction while watching Maya Rudolph impersonate her on “Saturday Night Live.”
The vice president watched in awe as Joy Behar threw to a clip of Rudolph from the Sept. 28 episode of “SNL,” in which Rudolph says, “I am so happy to be campaigning in whatever swing state I’m in, which I will just refer to as Wisconsi-Pensyl-Va-Georgia. Because I am going to protect your Va-Georgia.”
Harris’ mouth widened at the punchline as the presidential hopeful clapped and laughed in glee. “Oh my God!” she said. “I hadn’t seen that!”
“She’s so good. Maya Rudolph, she’s so good. She’s so good,” Harris continued. “She had the whole thing — the suit, the jewelry, everything. Wow, the mannerisms!”
It was announced in July that Rudolph would return to Studio 8H to portray the Democratic nominee for president. She was joined on the Season 50 premiere of the NBC sketch series by Jim Gaffigan as Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, and Andy Samberg as her husband, Doug Emhoff. Plus, Dana Carvey returned to “SNL” to portray President Joe Biden, while cast members Bowen Yang and James Austin Johnson are playing JD Vance and Donald Trump, respectively.
Rudolph, an “SNL” mainstay from 2000 to 2007, first played Harris on “SNL” in December 2019, winning the Emmy for guest actress in a comedy series despite only having a few lines in a presidential debate sketch. She returned throughout the 2020 election cycle to play Harris alongside Jim Carrey’s Biden, and she played Harris again when she hosted the series in March 2021, which earned her yet another Emmy for guest actress in a comedy series. (She was nominated again for her latest hosting stint on May 11, 2024.)
In her first episode back as Harris on Sept. 28, Rudolph proclaimed, “The Funt has been rebooted,” referring to Harris’ role as America’s “fun aunt.”
Rudolph broke down how she crafted her version of Harris in her Variety cover story in September. “I said, ‘When I see her, I see her having fun,’” she said. “And so the fictional Kamala that we created tapped into her fun. And then [‘SNL’ producer] Steve Higgins said to me that his wife called her a ‘fun aunt,’ and we were laughing at how that sounds like ‘funt.’ We just went from there. That was the moment where you realize, ‘Oh, now I know how to do this.’”
