Steve Martin won’t be gracing Studio 8H to impersonate a certain Midwest dad anytime soon.
Whenever a new politician gets vaulted onto the national stage, the internet scrambles to face-match them with their celebrity counterpart, its denizens generously taking it upon themselves to do the work of the Saturday Night Live casting team. Often these fan-castings go ignored, but something in the air was different on Tuesday when it was announced that Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz would be Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate.
It wasn’t long before someone realized who Walz’s silver hair, glasses, and general folksy vibe reminded them of: Steve Martin. From there, the calls for Martin to return to SNL as Walz grew louder until the banjo-playing comedian himself acknowledged the noise. “I just learned that Tim Walz wants to go on the road with Marty Short,” Martin said on Threads, a reference to his longtime creative partnership with Short.
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But Martin, famously a 16-time SNL host, has no desire to stake a claim on parodying the Democratic vice presidential nominee, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The newspaper reported on Wednesday afternoon that SNL head honcho Lorne Michaels had rung up Martin just hours earlier to ask him to play Walz on the show.
Martin “politely and promptly” turned him down, the Times reported.
“I wanted to say no and, by the way, he wanted me to say no,” the funnyman told the paper. “I said, ‘Lorne, I’m not an impressionist. You need someone who can really nail the guy.’ I was picked because I have gray hair and glasses.”
Nearly two decades the Minnesota governor’s senior, too, and with both a packed touring schedule and obligations as one of the stars of Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building, Martin implied he either couldn’t or wouldn’t commit to more than one appearance as Walz.
“It’s ongoing,” he said. “It’s not like you do it once and get applause and never do it again.”
The 50th season of SNL is set to kick off Sept. 28. Alum Maya Rudolph was previously confirmed to be returning to portray Harris, whom she first played in 2019 alongside Jim Carrey’s toothy Joe Biden and Alec Baldwin’s pouting Donald Trump.
The question remains: Who will be tapped to play Walz? While the late Chris Farley and Don Rickles are no longer around to slip on his gubernatorial shoes, a fictionalized version of Walz might yet take the shape of anybody from Danny DeVito to Jim Gaffigan to “an unknown 60-year-old man who took an improv class as a fun retirement activity.”
Or even—and here’s a novel suggestion—one of the people Lorne Michaels hired specifically because of their talent for comedic impressions. “Call me crazy,” actor Paul Scheer tweeted on Wednesday, “but I think one of the SNL cast members should play Tim Walz.”
