It broke Kate McKinnon’s brain to read that her impression of Hillary Clinton may have hurt her chances against Donald Trump in 2016.
McKinnon told Good Hang podcast—and fellow SNL alum—Amy Poehler Tuesday, “I remember there was one article that was like, ‘Will she hurt Hillary Clinton?’ And I was like, ‘God, y’all’… Should not have read, should never have looked, but that notion just broke my brain. Obviously, no one, I think, doing a satire has the power to actually influence” an election, she continued, “but I did not want to hurt anybody, even people I vehemently disagreed with politically.”
The SNL vet was a staple on the cast from 2012 to 2022, during which time she portratyed many politicians, most notably Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clinton, and Rudy Giuliani. Doing political comedy “was a double-edged sword,” McKinnon said, because despite the concerns about “influence,” she “felt like I was really doing something with my life, something meaningful—being engaged in the most peripheral possible way in culture, in history.”
But McKinnon was particularly disturbed by the notion that her comedy may have ushered in Donald Trump’s win. “There was some balancing to do there,” she explained.
McKinnon played Clinton throughout her 2016 campaign for the White House. It was during her run at the show that Trump himself hosted as a presidential candidate, drawing the ire of critics who theorize SNL helped endear the reality TV star-turned president to more voters.
Show boss Lorne Michaels’ biographer wrote in Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live that SNL staffers “continued to feel that they were responsible for the national disaster” of Trump’s election after he hosted in November 2015. Though the 41st season of SNL was regarded as anti-Trump overall, staffers still felt at the time that “the show had been criminally soft” on him, reports Morrison.
McKinnon donned her Clinton getup again for the opening of the first show after election night 2016 for an emotional performance of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” The performance mourned both Trump’s shock win, and Cohen’s death that week.
At the end of the now infamous segment, McKinnon turned to the camera when she’s finished singing and told viewers, “I’m not giving up, and neither should you.” Morrison wrote that staffers were “in tears” after Clinton’s loss.
But despite the show and its network’s role in expanding Trump’s mainstream outreach, an appearance on SNL doesn’t automatically equal more votes. Clinton appeared with McKinnon on the show, giving her stamp of approval of the comedian’s impression in a segment some perceived as a thinly-veiled ad for Clinton’s campaign.
In the most recent election, Kamala Harris appeared in the show’s opener alongside her impersonator Maya Rudolph, and her candidacy met the same fate as Clinton’s.
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