It has been a long, long time since “SNL” made a joke about the President of the United States. The Christmas episode of 2020, actually. But that seems likely to change on March 27, when Maya Rudolph will return as a presenter after the show takes off most of March.
Rudolph will be accompanied by musical guest Jack Harlow, who is appearing on “SNL” for the first time.
It is only the second time as a presenter for Rudolph, who made her debut as a presenter in 2012. She was a regular cast member from 2000-2007 and, of course, has made several appearances since then, most recently in her recurring role as Vice President Kamala Harris.
Harris appeared in that role during the first 6 episodes of the current “SNL” season, which aired in October and early November when the 2020 elections were taking place. She made another appearance in the Christmas episode for a small part, but since the show returned from winter break in mid-January, it hasn’t brought her back to play Harris.
Read too: ‘SNL’: Dr Fauci presents Kate McKinnon’s vaccine game program
This seems strange, because at this point in 2017, Alec Baldwin had already appeared twice as Donald Trump, including when hosted the episode of February 11, 2017, less than 3 weeks after Trump’s oath. In fact, Baldwin appeared to play Trump in a total of 8 episodes during the 2017 part of the 2016-2017 season.
But aside from that, the main lesson for “SNL” fans is that we still don’t know for sure who, if anyone, will play Joe Biden over the next few years, as Baldwin did for Trump. Jim Carrey played Biden last fall, but his performance was not so well received, which may be why he abruptly resigned hours before the Christmas episode mentioned earlier.
That night, Alex Moffat ended up playing Biden briefly and it was assumed that he would be the new Biden going forward, but as the show hasn’t made any Biden / Harris sketches since then, we really don’t know. What we do know, however, is that Rudolph is always charming, even when she plays Vice President Harris, so fans should have a lot of fun when “SNL” returns.