When Lorne Michaels hired ace impressionist Jay Pharoah to be a featured player on the 36th season of Saturday Night Live, many thought that it meant that Fred Armisen’s days playing Barack Obama were numbered. However, through the first seven episodes of this season, Armisen has continued to portray our nation’s President, while Pharoah has mainly been charged with doing impressions of Denzel Washington, Jay-Z and other prominent African-American stars. It’s unclear as to whether or not Lorne has any transition plans in place or if the subject has even been broached inside Studio 8H, but on last night’s episode of the Late Show With David Letterman, Pharoah took matters into his own hands.
After the tiniest of nudges from Dave (which, we can only assume, was planned during the pre-interview), Pharoah debuted his heavily-hyped Obama impression on national television on a show (not to mention a network!) other than the one that A) Pays him and B) Is helping turn him into a household name. Shots fired?
This was definitely an aggressive move on Pharoah’s behalf. Lorne is well known for being a control freak and, at this point in Pharoah’s career, he still has the power to make or break him. It’s impossible to say if Pharoah cleared this impression with Lorne in advance, but if he didn’t, you can bet that he’ll drop even lower in the SNL Power Rankings next week. That said! The impression was quite good, and, duh, SNL can always use the exposure. And while we’ve always enjoyed Armisen’s stoic and calm take on the POTUS, after seeing Pharoah’s take, we can’t see how Lorne can do anything BUT hand the impression over to him soon.
Mind you, this situation is not without precedent! During the Bush administration, Will Ferrell was originally tapped to play the bumbling Texan — a role he rode all the way to Broadway, mind you — but after he left the show in 2002, it was a free-for-all as to who would play W. Chris Parnell, Darrell Hammond, and Will Forte all took shots at taking over the role, but ultimately, Lorne decided that Jason Sudeikis fit the role the best. Will Lorne make the same decision with Pharoah this season? Since he’s definitely not talking, guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
RELATED(ish): Splitsider has got a good story about the Facebook campaign to score Cookie Monster — yes, that Cookie Monster — a gig hosting SNL this season.
