Everyone Wants Maya Rudolph Back as Kamala Harris on ‘SNL’

This week:

• Flipping out about Lady Gaga and Céline Dion at the Olympics.
• Should Maya Rudolph play Kamala Harris on SNL?
• Are the Veep comparisons a good thing?
• The energy I want to channel in life.
• A new all-time great J.Lo video just dropped.

Maya Rudolph Could Be Very Busy This Fall

You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? Or do you exist in the context of desperately wanting Maya Rudolph to revive her performance as Kamala Harris on the next season of Saturday Night Live?

Mere minutes after Joe Biden announced that he was dropping out of the 2024 presidential race and that Harris would be leading the Democratic ticket, the internet lit on fire with SNL fans begging for Harris to return for the sketch show’s 50th season.

It’s an understandable impulse: Rudolph’s take on Harris when she first played her in 2019 was so good that she won an Emmy Award for it in the Guest Actress in a Comedy Series category. Plus, Harris is on record as being a fan:

But is it feasible for a star like Rudolph, who left the show as a full-time cast member 17 years ago, to take this on? (Believe me, I screamed when I discovered that much time has passed.) She’s obviously returned to Studio 8H on a fairly regular basis since then and is nominated for two more Emmys for her hosting stint this past season. But Rudolph is also pretty damn busy: Those are two of her four nods across three different shows.

It’s not unprecedented for major celebs to make repeat trips to SNL to play political figures. Tina Fey as Sarah Palin is the major example. Larry David also appeared multiple times as Bernie Sanders. But it’s a whole other workload when the politician being spoofed is doing a full presidential campaign—and then possibly being elected to the Oval Office. When Rudolph first played Harris, it was Jim Carrey playing her running mate, Biden. Carrey’s been replaced by three different SNL cast members since.

So I offer a similar solution: Have Rudolph come back for the big, splashy opening to Season 50 that we all crave—and then have her hand over the wig and cackling laugh to a regular player. I know just the performer, too. It’s high time Ego Nwodim got the spotlight her talent deserves on the show. A starring role as Harris is the perfect opportunity for just that.

Is This Being “Just Like Veep” a Good Thing?

Ever since the calls for Biden to bow out of the race began and it looked like Harris would take over, I began rewatching Veep.

Reaallll original, I know. About a dozen people I know are doing the same thing—and so are, apparently, the rest of you. Viewership of the show surged over 300 percent this week, according to HBO.

The similarities between what’s happening in real life and what occurred on the show more than five years ago are eerie. Watching those events play out with Julia Louis-Dreyfus giving perhaps the funniest performance of my lifetime has been wild: alternatively cathartic and disturbing.

Veep was a series about how extreme of a demented, dysfunctional circus the government—particularly the White House—was in the show’s fictional world. It’s easy to laugh at those scenes because the show was so brilliant. But it also feels strange: This isn’t a sharply written comedy script we’re living through. It’s unprecedented history.

Original Veep creator Armando Iannucci addressed this very thing in a recent column for The New York Times. His take: The similarities are not that funny.

“This is the first time I’m setting out a definitive answer to that question, and the answer is: No, I’m not,” he wrote. “I’m extremely worried! Not about Ms. Harris. I’m sure she’ll inject much-needed sharpness into the campaign. What worries me is that politics has become so much like entertainment that the first thing we do to make sense of the moment is to test it against a sitcom.”

One of the Best Things I’ve Ever Heard

Before her death at age 53, actress Shannen Doherty made some arrangements for her funeral—including making a list of people she did not want to be there.

Here’s what she said on her Let’s Be Clear podcast in January:

“There’s a lot of people that I think would show up that I don’t want there. I don’t want them there because their reasons for showing up aren’t necessarily the best reasons. Like, they don’t really like me and, you know, they have their reasons and good for them, but they don’t actually really like me enough to show up to my funeral…[They’ll show up] because it’s the politically correct thing to do, and they don’t want to look bad, so I kinda want to take the pressure off them and I want my funeral to be like a love fest. I don’t want people to be crying or people to privately be like, ‘Thank God that bitch is dead now.’”

This is precisely the energy I need to channel more of in my life. I will be making my list promptly.

Must-Watch Content

If you need me at all this weekend, I will unfortunately be busy spending 48 hours watching this video of Jennifer Lopez and her vocal director on a constant loop. They’re singing the Barbra Streisand and Judy Garland duet “Get Happy/Happy Days Are Here Again,” and no, I will not be expressing an opinion about it. It’s still too raw.

Watch here:

What to watch this week:

The Fabulous Four: This is the real superhero movie of the summer. (Now in theaters)

Deadpool & Wolverine: The kick in the nuts Marvel desperately needed. (Now in theaters)

The Decameron: A 14th-century plague gets the sexy Netflix treatment. (Now on Netflix)

What to skip this week:

Time Bandits: It’s bad when even Lisa Kudrow can’t make your TV show funny. (Now on Apple TV+)