“Saturday Night Live” has already booked Maya Rudolph to return as Vice President Kamala Harris, but who should play her newly named running mate, Midwestern nice guy and governor of Minnesota Tim Walz?
The most apparently obvious candidate — similarly white-haired comedian Steve Martin — has, sadly, already turned down the gig as of Wednesday. But fear not, we’ve got plenty of other suggestions for Lorne Michaels to consider, including A-listers like Tom Hanks, Brad Pitt and John Goodman.
Read on for our full list below!
Tom Hanks
The very wholesome two-time Oscar winner Hanks, who is 68, has hosted “Saturday Night Live” a whopping 10 times, including as Halloween icon David S. Pumpkins. And we’ve already seen him with white hair when he played heroic pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger in the 2016 biopic from Clint Eastwood. And he kind of looked like Walz when he hosted a COVID-era “SNL” from his house when the actor was bald and wearing glasses.
Jim Gaffigan
Gaffigan, native Midwesterner (who was born in Elgin, Illinois and attended high school in LaPorte, Indiana), famously does not swear in his stand-up — which makes two solid arguments why he’d be a great fit for the job. And he’s only two years younger than Walz. You probably know him best from film roles in “13 Going on 30,” “17 Again” or “Unfrosted.” He’s also starred in his own series: 2000’s “Welcome to New York” and “The Jim Gaffigan Show,” which ran from 2015 to 2016 on TV Land.
Al Franken
Former “SNL” star Franken, who’s 73, has all the necessary requirements to step into Walz’s shoes: He’s from Minnesota, he’s been both a politician and a comedian … and he knows how to correctly pronounce the VP candidate’s last name. He shared a photo of himself with the Minnesota governor to X on Tuesday with a caption that read, “Veteran, teacher, football coach, congressman, governor. And he’s not weird!”
Julia Sweeney
Sweeney, the now white-haired 64-year-old comedian actress and author, who was on “SNL” from 1990 to 1994, suggested on Wednesday that she should be the one to play Walz. Her best-known character was Pat, an ambiguously androgynous person whose gender remained a mystery. The subsequent movie wasn’t great, but we also love Sweeney for the documentary “God Said Ha!” and her consulting work on “Sex and the City” and “Desperate Housewives.”
Danny DeVito
“Taxi” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” star DeVito is better known for playing short-tempered curmudgeons, but in a pinch, we could see the New Jersey native gently slam GOP rival JD Vance with the actual Waltz quote: “I can’t wait to debate the guy. That is, if he’s willing to get off the couch and show up.”
Jack McBrayer
A former “30 Rock” regular, McBrayer has a reputation for being politeness personified, particularly as NBC page Kenneth Parcell. He kept the niceness going with his Apple TV+ series “Hello, Jack! The Kindness Show.” The actor, who also voiced the Fix-It Felix character in the “Wreck-It Ralph” films, hails from the South, not the Midwest, but he did attend the University of Evansville in Indiana.
John Goodman
As the patriarch of “Roseanne” and spin-off “The Conners,” Goodman has spent a lot of time in the Midwest (fictional Lanford, Illinois, to be precise), and we think he’d be a great pick. Of course, when we hear that voice, we also think of Sully from “Monsters, Inc.”
Molly Kearney
Kearney just announced their exit from “SNL” a few days ago, but maybe NBC honchos could woo them back? The 32-year-old, who uses they/them pronouns, convincingly played a senior citizen twice their age in a recent “Elder PSA” skit. After playing more than one memorable nun on the sketch comedy series, Kearney joked to Cleveland Magazine earlier this year, “I’m either men or nuns, and I love my typecast. I’ll do it for the rest of my life.”
Brad Pitt
OK, we’re not seriously suggesting that Pitt play Walz, but it’s as good an occasion as any to remember the time he donned a white wig to play Dr. Anthony Fauci in an April 2020 skit. Fauci had jokingly requested the “Fight Club” star should play him and Pitt was happy to comply for the one-shot appearance.
