Maya Rudolph has shared what her former Saturday Night Live boss, Lorne Michaels, texted her after presidential candidate Joe Biden announced Kamala Harris as his running mate on Tuesday. The news makes Harris the first Black woman on a major party presidential ticket.
Rudolph, 48, has portrayed Harris on SNL and will likely continue to leading up to the 2020 presidential election.
“He sent me a GIF of myself, as Kamala, in sunglasses, sipping a cocktail and saying, ‘Oh no,’” Rudolph said about Michaels during a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “That really made me laugh.”
Michaels wasn’t the only one to think of Rudolph following the news. She said she was so inundated with messages that she felt like it was her birthday.
“My phone blew up yesterday. It’s pretty insane,” she said. “I think there’s a collective excitement about this. It’s a spot of positivity and hope and some good news, so it feels nice to be associated with that.”
“But I also feel like such a lazy cheater, because I didn’t do anything,” she added. “I’m not running. I don’t have to do anything but be the same fool I was. She’s doing all the hard work.”
Rudolph said she wasn’t sure what the historic nomination means for her work playing Harris, whom she has never met, on SNL. However, she already nabbed the politician’s approval on Twitter.
“I’ve never even spoken to her, no. When we did her that first time on SNL, she wrote a great tweet saying, ‘That girl being played by Maya Rudolph on SNL? That girl was me,’” Rudolph said. “It was really clever and great and so I wrote her back. But I haven’t had the chance to meet her. I would love to.”
Until she meets her, Rudolph’s impression comes from her perception of Harris as a “cool mom or fun aunt.”
“She’s cool, but she’s also responsible,” she explained. “So what does that look like? I didn’t really know exactly how to do her, but I kept going back to the idea of those parents that are like, ‘You kids can smoke weed, but you have to do it at my house.’ I’m not saying that’s Kamala! But that’s the feeling — cool but there are definitely rules at her house.”
