Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi revealed one of her life’s biggest regrets to Julia Louis-Dreyfus in a new episode of the actor’s Wiser Than Me podcast. And surprisingly, it’s about Saturday Night Live.
“One of my regrets is that I never hosted Saturday Night Live,” Pelosi told SNL alum Louis-Dreyfus. “I’m really funny,” she added.
Louis-Dreyfus told Pelosi that she’d be happy to help make that happen. “Well Nancy, let’s go! If Lorne is listening,” she said, “It’s not too late!” Pelosi was resolved that it was, however. “It’s over,” she said, “It’s too late. I wouldn’t think of it. I’ve crossed the bridge.” Louis-Dreyfus insisted that she’d “work on your audition with you,” as the 84-year-old laughed it off.
The field certainly seems wide open for Pelosi to step into the spotlight, as she’s four years younger than Betty White was when she hosted the show in 2010, as the eldest SNL host ever. She’s certainly of interest to the show’s audience too, because while the congresswoman has never hosted the show, she’s been a consistent character since 2005.
Pelosi was first portrayed by Amy Poehler in the mid-2000s, but cast members Kristen Wiig and Kate McKinnon have also played her several times. Even Cameron Diaz donned a Pelosi wig for her own impersonation when she hosted in 2005. But for now, Pelosi has no interest in checking that goal off her bucket list, she told Louis-Dreyfus.
Elsewhere in the interview, which Louis-Dreyfus clarified was taped before the congresswoman’s hip injury in Germany, Pelosi discussed how the level of vitriol that’s infiltrated American politics has evolved over her nearly 40 years in Congress. “[People] have to know where this vitriol is coming from,” Pelosi said. “We’re not in ‘gridlock,’ we’re in obstruction. This isn’t mutual disagreement here. This is initiated by them,” she continued, referring to the Republicans.
“For years, I have been the target,” she said, describing images she’s seen of herself, “dressed like a devil, horns, cloven feet. “What they did to Hillary Clinton in the ‘90s when she was first lady, they used this because they are bankrupt of ideas and they have to take other people down.”
She also discussed the attacker who broke into her home, attacking her husband Paul Pelosi with a hammer after being radicalized by far-right propaganda he’d read on the internet.
“The sanctity of our home [was] violated, his personal safety,” she said, “to the point we didn’t even know if he was going to survive. They laughed. They told jokes on their websites. The governor of Virginia, Republican governor, Elon Musk, all of them—they thought that was really funny. I mean, really? How much more do people have to know? So we don’t have shared values.”
Pelosi added, “I make no apology for saying this is not mutual. It is instigated by them and that’s who they are and where they are.”
