Dana Carvey had to learn Jennifer Coolidge impression last minute for “SNL” sketch: 'I still don't quite understand it'
"It was kind of an acid-y, esoteric sketch," the "Saturday Night Live" alum noted on his podcast.
Dana Carvey still doesn't quite understand why he was asked to play a 100-year-old Jennifer Coolidge trapped in an enchanted mirror on last weekend's Saturday Night Live, but he had a lot of fun doing it.
"They threw it at me Thursday night," Carvey told cohost David Spade on Superfly, the spinoff series of their popular Fly on the Wall podcast. "They explained to me that the character was like a Snow White thing, that my Jennifer Coolidge had been trapped in the mirror for 100 years."
The premise of the sketch is actress Jennifer Coolidge (Chloe Fineman) gets assistance from the Jennifer Coolidge reflection in her mirror (host Ariana Grande) in putting on "Maybelline Super Stay Long Wear Liquid Lip Color." Fineman's Coolidge asks, "Hey, I wonder what our lips look like from the side?" proceeding to unfurl a long-closed panel of the mirror to reveal a third Coolidge (Carvey). "Thank God you opened the mirror," he exclaims, "I've been trapped in here for years!"
"It was kind of an acid-y, esoteric sketch," Carvey said on the podcast. "I still don't quite understand it, but that was fun."
He explained that between dress rehearsal and the live show, "they had to remove about four beats" from the sketch. "One was we eat corn. It was a lot wilder, it was amazing. It was a non sequitur like, 'Hey. Wow. Let's eat some corn,'" Carvey panted in his best Coolidge voice. "They suddenly have corn. 'Can I have your corn?'"
Carvey told Spade that he "had a lot of guests backstage," including his former SNL costar Jon Lovitz, who shot a video of the Wayne's World star rehearsing backstage. In the video, shared on Carvey's Instagram, the comedian can be seen in his full Coolidge get-up, rehearsing the cut "corn" portion of the sketch.
"Are we going to have sex with this guy tonight?" Carvey read from the script. "What if he messes up our lipstick? Let's test it by eating this corn!"
The comic's musings also offer some insight into a question that arose after a delay during the Oct. 12 episode — due to a technical glitch before musical guest Stevie Nicks' second performance — made it seem impossible that both the Maybelline sketch and the "Hotel Detective" sketch that immediately followed were both actually live. Grande was featured in both and there was no time for her to change her hair and makeup in between, leaving many viewers convinced one or both of the sketches were actually recordings from dress rehearsal. Carvey's details of the lines cut from the dress rehearsal version imply that what fans saw on air that night was, in fact, a live sketch.
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Carvey, who was a standout on the cast from 1986-1993, has returned in every episode this season so far to play President Joe Biden in the show's openings, alongside former cast members Maya Rudolph as Kamala Harris and Andy Samberg as the VP's husband, Doug Emhoff, plus comedian Jim Gaffigan as Harris' running mate Tim Walz.
The master impressionist also noted that he considered the last episode his first time doing drag on the show, explaining, "I never really was in drag [before] because Church Lady, whatever you think she is, there's no lipstick."
Part of the humor of the "Maybelline" sketch was its send-up of the often cartoonishly long names for makeup products. "I was casually aware that lipstick commercials do have long phrases," Carvey told Spade on the podcast. "Maybelline's lip, lip, lip color, color, lips, special lip, lip." Spade joined in, "The day and night, out on the town, go with your first date lipstick."
The Maybelline brand even got in on the fun, commenting on Carvey's BTS Coolidge video, "Super Stay Matte is so good, even a kiss won’t mess it up 💋😉."
Watch the full sketch above, and listen to Carvey and Spade on Fly on the Wall's Superfly below.
New episodes of Saturday Night Live's historic 50th season air Saturdays at 11:30 p.m. ET/8:30 p.m. PT on NBC and Peacock.
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