Michelle Obama is not interested in being live from New York.
The former first lady shared on her IMO podcast Wednesday that she’d “never” agree to appear on Saturday Night Live. “People have asked me to do a lot of things,” she told guest Kenan Thompson. “I’ve been on talk shows, I’ve done skits with people, I have done… But SNL, I would never do that.”
“It would be terrifying. Just what you described to me… I wouldn’t be sleeping that week, I’d be worrying, I’d be worrying about looking at the camera. I don’t know how you all do that, week after week,” she told Thompson, who called her declaration “wild.”
Thompson, the show’s longest-running cast member who’s starring in his 21st season, told Obama, “My heart goes out to that because I know that feeling, but I just don’t have it” at SNL because “I’m very comfortable there I mean like we did a lot of sketches growing up and then the live factor doesn’t bother me much because it’s a large group of people doing it together.”
Obama was resolute, however, calling the prospect of SNL, “the most terrifying thing.”
Obama has never appeared on the show though she’s been impersonated numerous times over the years. Her past sketch comedy stints have been well-received, however. In 2015, she teamed up with SNL cast member at the time Jay Pharoah, for a comedic music video encouraging teens to go to college.
The following year, she appeared in a pre-taped bit with Stephen Colbert that played before her traditional interview on the late night show. The Atlantic notably called her performance “SNL-worthy,” at the time, as she and Colbert played kid-versions of themselves from underneath a blanket fort.
Her husband, former President Barack Obama appeared on the show live in 2007, in an appearance that went over so well, Seth Meyers said it was the first moment that signaled to him that Obama could win the presidency: “The thing I remember is the way the audience reacted when he was there. It was the first time I thought, oh—he’s gonna win.”
But the stress of doing SNL-style comedy live is a bridge too far for the former first lady, she said. When Thompson told Obama that he knows “the feeling,” he gave a poignant example: Stage fright is what keeps him from doing standup.
“That’s why I don’t do stand up, because it stresses me out,” he said. “If I have a gig, that’s all I’m thinking of the whole day, for days out. I can’t not focus on that. And then, if I travel to a town, and going out in the town, I’m in the hotel… watching TV, writing things, just taking the time away. It just feels so wasteful, so that’s obviously not my thing.”
Performing at SNL is a different experience for him, he explained to Obama as he tried to convince her that she might not find the show all that terrifying. “I think you would recognize the communal push uphill, which is the show,” he said. “We’re all trying to push the show to the top of the hill every single week, and everybody is hyper-focused and committed to the same goal.”
“No matter what their politics might be or whatever, everybody is respectful of the place,” Thompson said. “It’s almost like a temple, and there’s nobody trying to make it go left at all.”
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