Dana Carvey knew his stint on “Saturday Night Live” would be cut short thanks to former President Joe Biden.
The “Wayne’s World” actor was slated to spend six weeks in New York City to impersonate Biden at the request of the show’s head honcho, Lorne Michaels.
“Lorne is very persuasive,” he tells Page Six in an exclusive interview before imitating Michaels, “‘It’ll be Autumn in New York … and then afterwards you can tell us to f–k off.’ It was like, ‘OK, six weeks in New York.’”
However, the 69-year-old actor thought his return to “SNL” was over after Biden’s disastrous June 27th Presidential debate against now-President Trump, which precipitated him dropping out of the presidential race. Weeks later, former Vice President Kamala Harris stepped up as the Democratic candidate.
“When that first debate was sort of going awry with President Biden, I turned to my wife and I said, ‘We’re not going to New York,’ during the debate,” he recalls. “That’s absolutely true.”
And Carvey’s premonition came true … to a point.
The “Masters of Disguise” actor got to appear in 10 episodes alongside Maya Rudolph, who was impersonating Harris, and Jim Gaffigan, who took on the role of Governor of Minnesota and Vice President-hopeful, Tim Walz.
His Biden impersonation included a familiar scratching of the face, an affectation that Carvey calls his “favorite,” and little mannerisms that included picking up “toys on the carpet.”
Carvey — who stresses that he likes the peope he imitates — tells us that he approached his impersonation carefully, likening it to “threading” a needle to “make it funny but not make it in any way sad or cruel.”
“I’m not trying to really make political points or put them down,” he explains. “I’m trying to find what is fun about them.”
Throughout his stint on “SNL” from 1986 to 1993, Carvey got to impersonate another president: George H.W. Bush.
The comedian tells us that Bush, who died in 2018, loved his impersonation so much that he invited Carvey to the White House after he lost the 1992 Presidential election.
“He calls me out of the blue in December to come to Washington, DC,” Carvey recalls.
“And in that moment, I’m a young man. I just said, ‘Well, where would I stay?’ I was already thinking about what hotel or something,” he continued. “He paused, thought I was negotiating. ‘Well, stay right here in the White House with (former First Lady Barbara Bush) and I.”
Carvey hasn’t left “SNL” completely in the past as he currently co-hosts a podcast with his former co-star David Spade, where they share showbiz stories and parse the entertainment headlines.
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