Being the official impressionist for the President was a lot more fun when there were still people in Donald Trump’s camp who were less crazy than him.
When James Austin Johnson joined Saturday Night Live in 2021, he quickly assumed responsibility for the most talked-about celebrity impression on the show by filling the role of Donald Trump in a post-Alec Baldwin era. Johnson’s performance as Trump has long been the subject of political debate among the Saturday Night Live fandom, part of which feels that he is simply too likable in the role to communicate the seriousness of the President’s actions, but his talent for portraying Trump is undeniable, even if the job has become much less enjoyable since Trump re-took the White House.
During a recent talk with The Hollywood Reporter, Johnson admitted that attempting to turn Trump into a laughing stock every weekend has become a “super dark” challenge since Trump replaced his comparatively level-headed conservative allies with far-right extremists.
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Imagine telling Saturday Night Live fans in 2017 that, pretty soon, the cast is going to sincerely miss John Kelly and Nikki Haley.
“The sands shift,” Johnson said of the current state of Trump parody on SNL, “It used to not be as terrifying when he had moderate people around him who were trying to stop him. Now they’re all gone, and his enemies are powerless and paralyzed to stop of any it, which all comes across as super-dark — how do you find what’s funny within that?”
Nearly a year into Trump’s chaotic second term, Johnson still doesn’t have a complete answer, but SNL‘s Trump strategy remains a top priority for the five-season veteran. “I’m just trying to find new things happening with his speech and his brain and definitely the darkness, which is not easy with a guy who’s been dominating every single day for almost 10 years,” Johnson said of how his Trump impression continues to evolve.
In his search for answers on how to satirize a despot, Johnson says he’s turning to the classics for inspiration. “Hamlet is not saying, ‘I’m going to kill myself because I suck.’ He says he’s thinking about rivers and bones and ghosts and amid all the soliloquies you pick up on an undercurrent of really complex moral struggle,” Johnson invoked of another tragic figure who had a bone to pick with his own king. “I don’t want to call what I’m doing Shakespeare. But I am trying to find the deeper forms of Trump, who is a rich text.”
Trump is going to be thrilled when he hears that a SNL cast member finally called his approach to life, “rich.”
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