Jim Gaffigan revealed on Monday that he only got the “Saturday Night Live” gig of playing Tim Walz after his manager lied to the show’s booker that he already had his impersonation of the Democratic VP candidate down.
“I get a call from my manager and he’s like, ‘Hey, so we’ve been telling the booker at ‘SNL’ that you’ve been sending us videos where you’re pretending to be Tim Walz’ and I’m like, ‘Oh that’s an interesting approach…” the comedian said on Monday’s episode of the “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” podcast.
“And they’re like, ‘Yeah, and now they want to see them.’ And I’m like, ‘What do you mean, they want to see them?’” Gaffigan continued, to which O’Brien observed, “I’d be mad at this management team.”
Gaffigan, who has a new Hulu comedy special called “The Skinny,” said he had to come up with a convincing impression on the spot. After studying several Walz speeches, he decided to just go with an impression of his brother, Mitch.
“Mitch is similar to Tim Walz, an enthusiastic Midwestern guy who’s got a little bit of that golly gee,” the stand-up comedian explained. “So I essentially did an impression of my brother Mitch in different settings in this hotel and sent him off. And then I don’t know what happened, but it worked.”
O’Brien quipped, “They hired your brother.” Gaffigan then added that when people ask him, “How do you do that impression?” he’d reply, “Well, just don’t meet my brother Mitch and we should be fine.”
He played Walz in four episodes opposite former “SNL” regular Maya Rudolph, who returned to play Democratic nominee Kamala Harris after President Joe Biden bowed out of the presidential race.
