Saturday Night Live’s Colin Jost dropped some never-before-heard details about how some of the show’s most brutal political parodies came together.
On the first episode of SNL’s new short-form spinoff series “The Rundown,” Jost chose his favorite SNL cold open segment, which he added to show boss Lorne Michaels’s famous “Rundown” board.
Jost’s pick was Amy Poehler and Tina Fey’s “Katie Couric Interviews Sarah Palin,” because it the Seth Meyers-written sketch was quintessential Amy and Tina. “You got to see them playing off each other, and I think they’re two of the best to ever do it,” he said.
But there was another one he wrote that he thought deserved an honorable mention: the parody of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing in 2018.
“Kent Sublette and I wrote the Brett Kavanaugh hearing,” he said of the cold open, which starred Matt Damon as Kavanaugh. “We thought of Matt Damon, and he flew through the night from San Francisco. He arrived here at, like, noon on Saturday. He drank one beer to get into character, and then he just fully became Brett Kavanaugh.”
Kavanaugh was publicly accused of sexual assault by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford when the pair were high school classmates. During the hearing, he was visibly emotional, repeatedly raising his voice and tearing up as he vehemently denied Ford’s allegations.
“I have never sexually assaulted anyone—not in high school, not in college, not ever,” the real Kavanaugh said at the time, while memorably admitting, “I like beer.”
Damon played up Kabanaugh’s oscillation between fratty and weepy responses when he played the judge on SNL. “Now, I am usually an optimist. I’m a keg-is-half-full kind of guy,” Damon joked as Kavanaugh in the sketch.
Added Jost on “The Rundown,” “I cannot believe that all came together in less than 24 hours.”
Other SNL alums expected to appear in the YouTube series include Dana Carvey, Mikey Day, Chloe Fineman, and Bowen Yang.
