Saturday Night Live: 5 Weird Reactions To Celebrity Impressions

Harmless fun, right? Nothing to get your abs all in a ripple.  But don’t tell that to Wahlberg. He eventually showed up on SNL to “confront” Samburg (and to show he had a sense of humor), but apparently, there was some real-life aggression behind the sketch.  

All seemed OK at first. Wahlberg told MTV that “I love when people do imitations of me; I try to get people who work with me to do it all the time.”  Cool guy!  

But then he went on Jimmy Kimmel and let his true feelings loose:  “When I see that kid, I’m going to crack that big f***ing nose of his. Then I’m going to tell him, ‘say hi to your mother for me.’ I’m going to go down to ‘30 Rock’ and I’m going to slap him in the nose, I guaran-f***ing-tee you.”

Just think of how bad it would be if Wahlberg hated people imitating him. 

It was an uproarious impersonation -- but Donatella herself thought it could be better.  While the fashion designer thought Rudolph was “hilarious,” she gave the comic a phone call to offer some notes.

First, get rid of the ever-present glass of booze.  “I don’t drink.”  And second, “Take off the jewelry because it looks too fake -- I only wear real.”  As for general diva behavior? “A real diva would never scream at her guests to get out--she would ask one of her assistants to make the guest get out.”  

“I’m writing it down as we speak,” replied Rudolph. “Notes on being a diva.”

Perhaps surprisingly, Bush himself was a fan, telling Carvey that “I never thought your impression of me was nasty — never hit below the belt.”  But he had an unusual request for Carvey:  After he lost the 1992 election to Bill Clinton, Bush asked Carvey if he’d come to the White House to entertain his staff, the very same staff that was packing up their boxes and preparing to leave their jobs.  As they say in the business, tough crowd.

Carvey was hesitant but heck, it was the freaking President asking. He agreed, popping into the Oval Office unannounced as Bush making his Christmas list.  

“Love socks, stripy socks, also would love a pumpkin-colored tie — very festive, very pumpkiny.” When Carvey saw that a doubled-over Bush was leading the laughs, he pulled out all the stops.  “NA GA DA IT,” “wouldn’t be prudent,” “Santa doing that thing he does in that whole area over there.” 

Then Bush got in on the act, doing his impression of Carvey’s impression, followed by Carvey doing Bush doing Carvey’s Bush. The whole thing was pretty meta.

The two guys exchanged Christmas cards ever since.  

Sarah Palin noticed another aspect of the performance:  “They portrayed me as an idiot, and I hated that.”  So what’s a vice-presidential candidate to do?  Palin’s solution was to appear on SNL herself. “I wanted to come on the show and counter some of that.”

So … a sketch about Palin’s encyclopedic knowledge of economic policy?  Nah. She let us know she wasn’t an idiot by throwing her hands in the air to a Sarah Palin rap, of course (that for some reason was delivered by MC Amy Poehler).  It featured all of the same dumb “I can see Russia from my house” jokes that Palin hated in the first place.

“If I ran into Tina Fey again today, I would say, “You need to at least pay for my kids’ braces or something from all the money that you made off of pretending that you’re me!” says Palin. “My goodness, you capitalized on that! Can’t you contribute a little bit? Jeez!”

Annd that's why you were parodied.

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