Even though Dana Carvey was never part of the same Saturday Night Live cast as Tracy Morgan, anytime the 30 Rock star would bump into the Wayne’s World star, he’d refer to him as “alum”.
It’s a feeling that only 165 other people know.
And Carvey, who was a cast member between 1986 and 1993, is responsible for some of SNL’s most iconic characters including Church Lady, Gareth Algar and Hans.
“We understand the glue and the wig, and the cards as well as the adrenaline rush of it and really being under prepared most of the time,” Carvey told Deadline.
But it wasn’t until the launch of his Fly on the Wall podcast, the SNL oral history show that he hosts with David Spade, that he really realized what being a part of this institution meant.
“It gave us more empathy. Even really successful cast members are a little regretful or self-deprecating about it, or feel anxious even talking about it. There’s just nothing like it,” he said.
Carvey returned this year – Season 50 – to play an integral role, as President Joe Biden.
Lorne Michaels had previously asked Carvey whether he’d return over the previous four years after hearing Carvey’s Biden impression on podcasts including with Stephen Colbert.
Carvey had become aware that movie stars were suddenly starting to play political characters on the show from Jim Carrey as Biden, Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump, Matt Damon as Brett Kavanaugh and Melissa McCarthy as Sean Spicer.
But didn’t want to step on any toes of the current staff so before accepting he asked Steve Higgins to casually ask the current cast.
“When I was there, I think only Dan Akroyd came in once and did Bob Dole, and that was in the ‘80s, I was sensitive to that. But I checked and no one was really excited about doing Joe Biden at that point, so I said, ‘If no one wants to do it, I’m happy to come in,” he said.
He called returning to 30 Rock a “surreal” experience. “If you go back to where you went to high school, or maybe even grade school, and you go there on a Sunday afternoon, there’s a certain kind of melancholy or vibe or something odd about it, and that’s what going back there is,” he added.
Having spoken to many of the current cast – including Ego Nwodim, Bowen Yang, Colin Jost, Michael Che and Chloe Fineman – on his Fly on the Wall podcast over the last couple of years helped.
Carvey as Biden, Maya Rudolph as Kamala Harris, Jim Gaffigan as Tim Waltz and Andy Samberg and Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff kicked off the cold open to Season 50.
Carvey said he wasn’t initially comfortable with his own Biden impression but soon started to notice new “hooks” once he became President and he built on that, from wandering around aimlessly to bringing his finger to scratch his face and going full “1950s alpha President”. He didn’t want him to just be the weak guy who whispers.
It was at the first read through in Studio 8H when he knew he had it. “Lorne’s to my right and the whole cast and writers are like ‘OK, what’s he got?’. Just that week, I realized another hook, which was [Biden saying] ‘Guess what. By the way. The fact of the matter is’. I’m not sure if you’d call them non-sequiturs but he never really answers them and just goes off in a little tangent. I met with the writers the night before and walked them through a lot of my hooks but I just ripped it there and then I saw out of the corner of my eye, Lorne Michael’s shoulders going up and down, which happens when he laughs really hard,” he said.
Carvey knew he was signed up for at least a few weeks given that there were five episodes between the start of the season and the Presidential election. After Trump won reelection, Carvey played Elon Musk in one episode (later taken over by his Wayne’s World colleague Mike Myers) before appearing in a few more episodes as Biden as well as Al Pacino and Church Lady. “I didn’t really go out with a bang,” he joked.
Marcello Hernández and Dana Carvey in Church Chat (Will Heath/NBC)
He had last played Church Lady, who he had developed with writer Rosie Shuster, ex-wife of Michael’s, in 2016, describing the 2016 Presidential Election as a choice between “a bitter, female android from the ’90s…or a riverboat gambler with a big tummy and an orange head”.
This time, he was in the company of his podcast pal Spade, who played Hunter Biden, Hernández, who played baseball player Juan Soto and Sarah Sherman as Matt Gaetz.
He revealed that Michaels sprung the latest appearance on him at the last minute. “I’d flown in late Thursday night, and there was already a script, which is unusual for me. The writers are absolutely brilliant, but I missed out on not being in the room at the beginning of that. But it was fun and the song Satan Had A Good Year was fun, although it had to be cut in half. It made me laugh because so many of the cast members, like Heidi Gardner and Mikey Day, just really wanted to be on Church Chat,” he added.
Unfortunately for Carvey, he missed SNL50 thanks to a bout of the flu. Even though Carvey and Myers had brought back Wayne’s World for the 40th anniversary, Michaels had inquired about them doing it again for the 50th. “There hasn’t been anything like it in comedy for the last 50 years so anyone who was a part of it, feels happy about that and proud that they were on it,” he added.
Carvey, who regularly segues right into a litany of impressions during our phone call, had a lot of stories involving SNL. He has been approached to write a book “several times” but said that he’d only do it when he slows down. “With my personality, I have a hard time phoning things in. I’m pretty self critical. I want it to be great, whether it could be great, I don’t know. I do think the written word is still number one in western civilization and it still is what lasts. Last time I was in Washington, DC I was at the Lincoln Memorial, and I saw the Gettysburg Address. By the time I got to the end, I really teared up. There’s a magic to describing a situation, getting to the heart of it, and making people want to keep reading. I’m intrigued by it as a creative challenge,” he added.
Carvey talks about SNL with such reverence and admiration, never having believed as a child of five with a dad who is a high school teacher, that it’d ever be something he could do. “When I got on the show, and after a few turns of the dial, I was like ‘Oh, God, this is what I was always meant to do. I just can’t imagine my life or career without having the luck and the sheer timing [to get on the show].”
