Martin Short or Andy Samberg — who did it better?
Doug Emhoff weighed in on his various Saturday Night Live impersonators this week, answering the ultimate question: Martin Short or Andy Samberg?
“Martin Short is way older and shorter, but he actually got me,” Emhoff told Gavin Newsom, Marshawn Lynch and Doug Hendrickson on the Politickin’ podcast. “Samberg — it’s good, it’s funny. It’s not quite me, but some of the lines are pretty good.”
Short played the Second Gentlemen for several sketches when Emhoff and his wife, Kamala Harris, entered the national conversation during the last presidential election in 2020. Samberg took on the role when SNL returned ahead of the November election this fall. In the interview this week, Emhoff added that Samberg “has the hair down,” and said the viral “Dougy” dance is funny, but perhaps not entirely accurate.
Emhoff went on to speak about his experience seeing himself depicted on the show, after growing up watching the sketches.
“This is a show I watched literally, my whole life,” he said. “It came out and 50 years ago, so I was 10… We all stayed up for [it] and watched — and throughout the week we would repeat all the all the things that we’d seen on the show that week, all the iconic skits from way back when.”
He continued, “To see yourself on it, yeah, the group chats blow up on that kind of stuff… it’s one of many surreal things that I’ve experienced in this world, I love it.”
He also weighed in on Maya Rudolph‘s impression of his wife. “She’s really upped her game,” he said. “She came back this time. It’s like, wow. She’s so on it. She’s done a really good job.”
On SNL this season, Rudolph and Samberg are joined by James Austin Johnson as Donald Trump, Jim Gaffigan as Tim Walz, Bowen Yang as J.D. Vance and Dana Carvey as Joe Biden.