President Trump has said many things about “Saturday Night Live” over the years. Few of them are favorable, highlighting his disdain for the late-night sketch comedy show, though his previous stints as host would suggest otherwise.
The president hosted the show in 2004 and in 2015, shortly after announcing his first run for president. The decision to have him host “SNL” in 2015 was controversial at the time, but NBC’s top brass defended the move, citing his front-runner status among Republicans and the high ratings it produced. “At the end of the day, he was on the show for 11 minutes and … it wasn’t like the Earth fell off its axis,” said then-NBC Entertainment Chairman Robert Greenblatt during the Television Critics Assn. press tour in 2016. He would later call Trump “toxic” and “demented.”
Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly said he believes the show is unfunny, lacks talent and is “just a political ad for the Dems” nowadays. The sentiment echoes comments he’s made about late-night talk show hosts Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel and their respective shows, each known for skewering Trump. With Season 51 of “Saturday Night Live” set to begin Saturday, and recent settlements with media outlets and tech companies making headlines — YouTube settled a Trump lawsuit for nearly $25 million Monday over the suspension of his account — a renewed focus will be on the show and how it spoofs the president and his policies.
Colbert’s series was canceled by CBS in July and will conclude its 10-year run next year in May. While CBS cited financial reasons for its decision to end Colbert’s show, the host was a vocal critic of both Trump and CBS’ parent company, Paramount, which had recently settled a lawsuit with Trump just before the Federal Communications Commission approved its merger with Skydance Media (Colbert called the settlement “a big fat bribe”).
Kimmel was benched by ABC in September after the head of the FCC, a Trump appointee, threatened the network over the host’s comments about Charlie Kirk’s suspected killer. Kimmel has since returned to the air, and used his first episode back to defend free speech. Colbert and Kimmel also appeared as guests on each other’s shows Tuesday, expressing mutual support and cracking jokes at Trump’s expense. Trump has also called for NBC to ax its late-night hosts Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon, both of whom are “SNL” alums.
Now, “SNL” could be the next target of the administration’s scrutiny. Trump’s posts on social media have previously aired his disapproval for how the series mocks and satirizes him and his administration, and he has suggested investigating NBC as result.
“Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC!,” Trump tweeted in February 2019, during his first term in office. “Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution? Likewise for many other shows? Very unfair and should be looked into. This is the real Collusion!”
Donald Trump in 2015, the year NBC cut ties after he made comments about undocumented Mexican immigrants.
(Andrew H. Walker / Getty Images)
Over the years, Trump has had a contentious relationship with the network that once aired “The Apprentice,” the show that made him a reality TV star, and his Miss Universe pageant. In 2015, NBC cut ties with Trump over comments he made about undocumented Mexican immigrants.
“Saturday Night Live,” which celebrated its 50th anniversary earlier this year with multiple specials, has been churning out political parodies for decades, and its comedy has targeted leaders from all political backgrounds.
The first time Trump was portrayed on “SNL” was in 1988 by then-cast member Phil Hartman. Since then, a host of actors and cast members have cycled through with their Trump impressions, with one of the most memorable being Alec Baldwin, who took over from Darrell Hammond in 2016 ahead of the presidential election.
Trump disliked Baldwin’s portrayal, and wrote in 2018 that Baldwin’s “dying mediocre career was saved by his terrible impersonation.” Baldwin won an Emmy for supporting actor in 2017 for playing the president.
The “30 Rock” actor’s stint as Trump on “SNL” lasted through 2020, and he made appearances as Trump even when the show was filming remotely during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of his most memorable moments impersonating the president were in cold opens that mocked the debates between Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Alec Baldwin in 2017 as President-elect Donald J. Trump during a “Saturday Night Live” cold open sketch.
(Will Heath / NBC)
In March 2019, Trump wrote that “SNL” continues “knocking the same person (me), over & over, without so much of a mention of ‘the other side.’” The episode that aired the weekend he wrote that tweet was a rerun. “Like an advertisement without consequences,” he went on.
According to reports from the Daily Beast, Trump took a step beyond airing his grievances over Twitter that time. He reportedly asked advisors and lawyers in early 2019 about what the FCC, the court system, and even the Department of Justice could do to look into “SNL” and other late-night comedy figures who had mocked him. That inquiry did not amount to any actions, according to the outlet.
In 2022, Trump said the show’s ratings were “HUUUGE!” when he hosted, but that they’ve since tapered off. The most recent season of “SNL” was the most-watched in three years, with a season average of more than 8 million viewers.
He went on to write that creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels is “angry and exhausted, the show even more so. It was once good, never great, but now, like the Late Night Losers who have lost their audience but have no idea why, it is over for SNL — A great thing for America!”
Michaels, who rarely gives interviews, reflected on the cancellation of Colbert’s show and what it means for late-night television in an August conversation with Puck News. Michaels said he was “stunned” by CBS’ cancellation of “The Late Show,” but added, “I don’t think any of us are going to ever know” if the decision was political.
“Whatever crimes Trump is committing, he’s doing it in broad daylight,” Michaels went on to say. “There is absolutely nothing that the people who vote for him — or me — don’t know.” He also called Trump a “really powerful media figure” who “knows how to hold an audience.”
“His politics are obviously not my politics, but denouncing [him] doesn’t work,” he added.
While many cold opens and “Weekend Update” segments have been dedicated to skewering the president, often making him the butt of jokes, the cold open in the episode immediately following the 2024 election had a different approach. Trump’s opponent, then-Vice President Kamala Harris, had appeared on an episode just days before the election, but after Trump’s victory, the cast promised they had “been with [him] all along,” adding that they all voted for him and supported him.
“If you’re keeping some sort of list of your enemies, then we should not be on that list,” they said before debuting their new Trump impression, “Hot jacked Trump,” which featured impressionist James Austin Johnson in a muscle tee and a headband.
Johnson began portraying the president on the series in 2021, and Michaels said he will continue in the role for Season 51. His portrayal mirror’s Trump’s speech patterns and his tendency to veer into tangents about pop culture. Since Trump’s inauguration in January, the cold opens have zeroed in on Trump, focusing on his relationship with Elon Musk and his policies.
The “Weekend Update” segment, hosted by Colin Jost and Michael Che, tends to take sharper jabs the president’s policies and comments, as well as other administration officials.
In the Puck interview, Michaels implied the show wasn’t going to back down, and when he was asked whether political comedy will be tougher in the current climate, Michaels said no.
“I don’t think anybody knows what Michael Che’s politics are,” he said, “but they do think he’s funny.”
Brendan Carr, the chairman of the FCC who has been in the headlines for his role in Kimmel’s benching, wrote in 2020 that political satire is one of the “oldest and most important forms of free speech.”
“From Internet memes to late-night comedians, from cartoons to the plays and poems as old as organized government itself — Political Satire circumvents traditional gatekeepers & helps hold those in power accountable,” he continued. “Not surprising that it’s long been targeted for censorship.”
This article contains spoilers for the finale of Prime Video’s “The Girlfriend.”
After reading the pilot for “The Girlfriend,” Robin Wright could see how the entire series would unfold. She was initially approached to direct the first episode, but she was so entranced by the adaptation of Michelle Frances’ 2017 novel she came on board not just as a director, but as an executive producer.
And when it came to casting Laura, a fierce matriarch committed to protecting her son, Daniel, from his new girlfriend, everyone she pictured in the role was unavailable.
“My dream was Tilda Swinton,” Wright says, speaking from the Ham Yard Hotel in London alongside her co-star Olivia Cooke, whose Prime Video series premiered Wednesday. “The time crunch was getting narrower, so Jonathan Cavendish of Imaginarium [Productions] finally said, ‘Would you consider playing Laura? You know her so well.’ What interested me was expanding on each character and developing this show beyond the book, which was already very full and rich.”
Cooke was Wright’s first choice to play Cherry, Daniel’s working-class girlfriend, who may or may not have suspicious motives and a violent past. The actors hopped on a Zoom call at the end of 2023 and were immediately on the same page about the thriller series. Both were intrigued by the idea that each episode depicted the characters’ individual takes on the events, forcing viewers to frequently change their allegiance about who is right. Is Cherry deviously trying to push Laura aside for better access to Daniel, or is Laura paranoid and overbearing?
Laura (Robin Wright) is suspicious of Cherry and her motives. (Christopher Raphael / Prime)
“I was enticed by the dual perspectives and delving more into that reality because that is how we operate,” Wright says. “That is the human condition. You perceive [something] in a different way than I do. We’re all a hero of our own story and of our own perspective, but we could be the villain in someone else’s perspective. That’s what happens with Cherry and Laura. Jealousy turns into a power struggle.”
“It’s really fun to dial up the maliciousness and the duplicitous nature of a woman,” Cooke adds. “To play all these different sides and all these different faculties. And both our characters contain them all.”
“It was almost like having the variety pack of being a female,” Wright continues. “It’s easy for the viewer to go back and forth, where you’ll be in favor of this one and then not in favor. And it’s always rooted in true emotion. Wherever Laura or Cherry is coming from, that’s her truth. That’s her story.”
“You’ve always got to champion the characters you’re playing in order to play them honestly,” Cooke says. “I completely understood where Cherry was coming from. A lot of that is lack and fear and scarcity. Not having a parachute or a safety net, and having to constantly strive and move forward. She’s a survivor and she’s scrappy, and she will be the quickest and most ferocious to her own defense.”
The conflict between Laura and Cherry aggressively ratchets up over the course of six episodes. After a rock climbing accident that puts Daniel (Laurie Davidson) into a coma, Laura convinces Cherry that he’s died. Cherry later threatens Laura with a knife — or does she? Cooke says she loved “having the excuse to go f— feral.”
“What’s fun about Laura’s perspective is Cherry seems completely unhinged and that there’s a real malevolent undertone to her behavior,” Cooke says. “But in Cherry’s perspective, it’s all coming from a place of just scrambling. She’s tried to put her best foot forward when she meets Laura for the first time and she’s tried to cover up her past a little bit by saying the odd white lie. And a mum sniffs that out immediately.”
“What’s fun about Laura’s perspective is Cherry seems completely unhinged and that there’s a real malevolent undertone to her behavior,” Olivia Cooke says. “But in Cherry’s perspective, it’s all coming from a place of just scrambling.”
(Jennifer McCord / For The Times)
Cooke describes Cherry as an “underdog trying to claw herself up.” “I want the audience to really be of two minds about her,” she says. “And women usually have to be so buttoned up.
“It’s always, ‘You can’t say that or don’t emote that,’” Wright chimes in. “This gave us an opportunity to do what a lot of women would like to say or do, but they can’t. You always have to be a diplomat. This was about being a human being. Women are very layered individuals. We can do 16 things at once. That’s why we can carry children for nine months and then raise them. I wanted to show all of those colors of a woman.”
The role gave Cooke the chance to showcase her range and expressiveness.
“Even just for my own personal life, it felt really cathartic to be able to be angry and be able to scream and be a person who wears their emotions so closely to the surface,” Cooke adds. “Cherry is effervescent. It’s always there waiting to come out. She’s so reactive. And I’m hypervigilant for the warning signs before I react. This was like a rage room.”
In the tumultuous finale, Laura drugs Daniel to keep him away from Cherry. After Cherry breaks into Laura’s house, the duo find themselves in a physical altercation in the basement swimming pool. An addled Daniel discovers them fighting and jumps in to protect Cherry, accidentally holding his mother under the water for too long. The immediate interpretation is that Laura dies at the hand of her son, which is what the actors shot on set in London last year.
“There was an aerial shot of mom dead in his arms,” Wright says. “It was beautiful. He was holding her and he looks at Cherry and mom was dead in his arms in the way I had held him in Spain. But the [producers] cut it out because it showed that she had died.”
Laurie Davidson, who plays Daniel, and Robin Wright in a scene from “The Girlfriend.”
(Christopher Raphael / Prime)
The decision to have Daniel accidentally kill (or not kill) Laura resulted from a “big discussion,” as Wright puts it. The obvious conclusion was to have Cherry purposefully murder Laura, but Wright pushed against that.
“I said, ‘It needs to be the son that kills his mother because he will never get out of her clutches when she’s alive,’” Wright says. “He’s going to be in the middle of this war zone for the rest of his life. When he comes down [to the pool], he’s in a stupor. He’s almost hallucinating. When he dives in the pool and he sees [Laura] trying to drown his girlfriend, he doesn’t know what’s happened prior to that moment, which is she’s tried to kill mom. He has no sense of time and space because he’s under the influence.”
Cooke says she didn’t play the scene as Cherry wanting Laura to die. “Maybe people will read it as that, but I didn’t,” Cooke says. “She knows it’s gone too far. That’s what I played in the moment, shouting at Daniel to snap out of it. But, you know, she did get the house.”
Shooting the pool altercation was a challenging day. Much of the series was filmed in a private house in London’s St. John’s Wood neighborhood, which had an actual swimming pool in the basement. Although the pool was supposedly heated, the actors didn’t experience any warmth.
“It was f— hard,” Wright recalls. “For me, it was like waterboarding. People think, ‘Oh, my God, so much fun to act in those scenes.’ No, it’s not. It’s really tough. We were all drowned rats and freezing cold.”
Still, Cooke says it was enjoyable to go to such intense limits emotionally.
“It’s fun being able to go to the very edge of your emotional capacity in a very safe, fun, embracing environment,” she says. “We wouldn’t have been able to do that in the pool, and be able to try and murder each other and then laugh, if it wasn’t built on trust and love. … These characters do very heightened, crazy stuff, but it’s still seeped in honesty and naturalism, which you need in order to go on this journey.”
Robin Wright recalls how difficult shooting the pool scene was: “For me, it was like waterboarding.” Nevertheless, Olivia Cooke says it was “fun being able to go to the very edge of your emotional capacity.”(Jennifer McCord / For The Times)
At the end of the finale, Cherry and Daniel move into Laura’s mansion with the blessing of Daniel’s father, Howard (Waleed Zuaiter). Daniel discovers a voicemail from Laura recounting how Cherry’s mother, Tracey (Karen Henthorn), warned of her daughter’s malicious motives. But while Daniel is clearly in trouble, Wright says you’re not necessarily meant to interpret it as Laura being completely out of the picture.
“We wanted to leave it a little bit open,” she says. “You see the pregnant family living in the Sanderson house and mommy’s gone. Could Laura still be alive? Did she really die? Has she just been shunned to the priory?”
Wright says they wanted to leave it to the audience to decide what happened.
“But Daniel is awakened,” she adds. “If Laura is alive, he could go back to her and say, ‘I now believe you and now I’m with a crazy woman and afraid she’s going to kill me in my sleep.’ There are many iterations where it can go if there is a Season 2.”
As of this interview, no announcement has been made about another season. Cooke, who also stars as Alicent Hightower in “House of the Dragon,” says she would have to get permission from HBO to be part of a concurrent episodic series. Plus, as Wright notes, it’s all about the algorithm. “You always have to wait and see if it’s a semi-success,” Wright says. She adds, turning to Cooke, “If there is a Season 2, I think you should kill the cat in Episode 1, gut it and wear it as a hat.”
For Wright, that’s part of the appeal of being an executive producer — she could brainstorm all the unhinged things that could happen between the characters. She loved coming up with story ideas and character backgrounds, and helping to sculpt the ending, which differs from the novel, was pure joy.
“This was my first opportunity to develop something from the ground up,” says Robin Wright, who executive produces and is a director on the series. “I took a bunch of personal stories, things that I’ve heard, and threw them in there.”
(Jennifer McCord / For The Times)
“This was my first opportunity to develop something from the ground up,” Wright says. “I took a bunch of personal stories, things that I’ve heard, and threw them in there. Like Laura kissing her son on the lips — that came from a friend of mine. And Laura spraying Cherry with her perfume in a shop and saying, ‘Daniel loves this,’ came from someone on set. Things were constantly percolating.”
Wright directed the first three episodes, setting the visual and thematic tone for the series, while Andrea Harkin took on the latter three. The actor says there was a real freedom on set, which was helped by the rehearsals the cast was able to do before filming. She made it a point to always give the actors their own take for each scene.
“Generally, I’d use the take where they went for a free-for-all,” she says. “You get locked in a box as actors. We all do. You pick a choice and you stick with that choice. But when you throw that out the window, the s— that comes out of actors is amazing. That’s what’s so beautiful about being able to direct and being an actor myself. I love watching how it evolves and the light that comes out of them and the emotion that’s brought to the surface.”
“I’ve never acted opposite my director before,” Cooke adds. “The chain of command was so short. Robin was acting with me, but also watching to see what I do and changing her performance to my reaction, which was amazing. It makes it very alive and kinetic.”
Ultimately, it’s up to the viewer to decide whether Laura or Cherry is the villain of “The Girlfriend.” And, as Wright says, it’s simply a matter of how you see things.
“You as the viewer get to decide: Is there a truth, or is it just subjective?” she says. “Because it is subjective for each of our perspectives and we own it. It happened the way you personally know it happened. But the truth lies somewhere in between.”
ABC’s “Will Trent” is no ordinary police procedural.
“There’s a thousand cop shows,” said Ramón Rodriguez, who portrays the show’s main character, Will Trent. “How do you make this one stand out?”
The broadcast drama series, which also airs on Hulu, centers special agent Trent: a dapper investigator whose instinctual crime-solving skills render him essential to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. But beneath the three-piece suit, there’s a more complex side to Trent, who navigates the residual trauma from being abandoned at birth and growing up in the Atlanta foster care system. He is also dyslexic.
“One of the exciting things when I came onto the show was not knowing where this character was from,” said Rodriguez, 45. “Trent was very much [written as] a colorless character.”
Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Rodriguez greeted me on a Zoom call from his present home in Southern California, while wearing a New York Knicks cap. Before “Will Trent,” he previously played the first main Hispanic character on the HBO series “The Wire,” and appeared in films such as 2009’s “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” and “G20,” a thriller featuring Viola Davis, which premiered April 10 on Amazon Prime Video.
Since the 2023 premiere of “Will Trent,” Rodriguez has molded his beloved character in many ways; he’s a hard-nosed detective with a mushy side, which is most evident in scenes with his pocket-sized chihuahua named Betty. Based on Karin Slaughter’s New York Times-bestselling novel series “Will Trent,” showrunners Liz Heldens and Daniel Thomsen organically tailored the titular role to reflect Rodriguez’s real-life Puerto Rican identity. It’s a major win for Latinos in an industry that otherwise lacks Latino-led programming.
“Once we run out of feeling fresh, creative, excited and inspired, then I think we start phoning it in,” said Rodriguez. “But that’s something I’m not interested in and I know my partners aren’t either.”
Rodriguez has taken on roles behind the camera as well. He directed “I’m a Guest Here,” the first episode of Season 3, which wrapped earlier this month; he was also named an executive producer. “I really wanted to be a part of the creative collaboration of creating this character in this show,” said Rodriguez.
When Season 3 dropped a bombshell regarding Trent’s biological father, it paved the way for a nail-biting Season 4, which was confirmed earlier this year.
This interview has been edited and shortened for clarity. It also reveals Season 3 spoilers.
In the books, Will Trent isn’t Puerto Rican, but this series is peeking into your own Puerto Rican identity. What are your thoughts on that?
It was a topic that they were curious about exploring. Where does Will come from as an orphan who grew up in the foster care system? Identity becomes a focal point for someone like that. Again [him being Puerto Rican] isn’t in the books, which is kind of exciting. We’ve been able to separate and say that the books are the books.
It wasn’t something that we were trying to sort of check a box and say, “Great, Will’s heritage is Puerto Rican.” It was a very organic explanation of this character discovering who he is.
When you were cast for the lead, did you ever picture the show as what it is today?
You never know what’s gonna work and why it’s gonna work. You don’t have control of a lot of things in this business. The one thing I do have control over is my work, what I can bring to it, what I try to do. This is the first time I’ve been on a show that’s gone on for this long from the pilot.
If you would’ve asked me that, is this gonna be the show that goes past one season? I probably would’ve said, “I don’t think so.” And it’s nothing against the show, you just don’t know. It took a minute for me to be fully convinced, but I’m so grateful that they were willing to continue having conversations with me and that they were really willing to have me on as a partner because that was important to me.
It doesn’t feel like the show hinges on those elements of identity. Why is it important to keep that balance in this procedural show?
[Solving cases is] another aspect of the show that I know audiences love. I just think the things that tend to pull our hearts to the things that are emotional and personal things, what someone’s struggling with or how are they overcoming it.
In Season 3, we have a really pivotal moment where Will accidentally shoots a bad guy, but ends up killing a young boy by accident. That case ended up changing the rest of the season — he was not able to recover from that event of having the boy die in his arms. That was Episode 11 and that will likely go into Season 4.
Your dog Betty also shines in Season 3. We get to hear her voice for the first time which happens during a fun hallucination scene. What was it like to film that episode?
That was two episodes after this tragic episode I just described, which is crazy, right? We wanted to mix levity and humor with our heavy drama and emotional stuff.
So as Will was entering this case that involved a cult, he gets caught undercover and in that process he gets drugged. Liz Heldens, one of our showrunners, had been dying to find a way to get me to dance on this show, and I was like “Listen: Will Trent is an awkward individual, he’s not someone that’s out here dancing.” She was like, “Well, what if that’s a hallucination?” I was like, “That’s brilliant!” Anything can happen while he’s tripping.
I remember I was walking on set and one of our production assistants, Tim, had read the script and said, “What if Betty talks?” So I pitched that to Liz and she topped it and went, “Well, what if Betty’s British?”
You made your directorial debut in Season 3. How was that experience for you?
I felt like a kid in a candy store. By Season 3, I really understood the character and what works with our show, where our strengths are. I just got to be me in certain scenes, because at the start of the [third] season Will has left the [Georgia Bureau of Investigation], he’s got a beard and he’s in a T-shirt, jeans and curly hair.
It was also fun to direct new cast members. We introduced Gina Rodriguez, who played Marion Alba, and Antwayn Hopper, who played Rafel Wexford. Which was really fun. I’d be like: “No notes.” [Laughs.]
Will you be directing in Season 4?
I will definitely be directing at least one episode next season. It makes the most sense for me to direct the premiere as I did this past season. I love that pressure of having to set the bar for a season.
What can audiences expect for the upcoming season?
We’re about to begin these serious conversations. There were some pretty serious cliffhangers at the end of Season 3, where we find out Angie Polaski (Erika Christensen) is pregnant, and Will is definitely not the father, so that’s gonna be something to explore. Amanda Wagner (Sonja Sohn), who is a maternal figure for Will, is in the hospital bed. We just discovered his dad, [Sheriff Caleb Roussard], which we don’t know too much about, so I’d want to know more about the character and what happened with the mom. There’s just so many questions that we will get to explore — I mean, is there new love in Will’s life?
‘SNL’ is another late-night show that has been a target of Trump’s ire
President Trump has said many things about “Saturday Night Live” over the years. Few of them are favorable, highlighting his disdain for the late-night sketch comedy show, though his previous stints as host would suggest otherwise.
The president hosted the show in 2004 and in 2015, shortly after announcing his first run for president. The decision to have him host “SNL” in 2015 was controversial at the time, but NBC’s top brass defended the move, citing his front-runner status among Republicans and the high ratings it produced. “At the end of the day, he was on the show for 11 minutes and … it wasn’t like the Earth fell off its axis,” said then-NBC Entertainment Chairman Robert Greenblatt during the Television Critics Assn. press tour in 2016. He would later call Trump “toxic” and “demented.”
Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly said he believes the show is unfunny, lacks talent and is “just a political ad for the Dems” nowadays. The sentiment echoes comments he’s made about late-night talk show hosts Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel and their respective shows, each known for skewering Trump. With Season 51 of “Saturday Night Live” set to begin Saturday, and recent settlements with media outlets and tech companies making headlines — YouTube settled a Trump lawsuit for nearly $25 million Monday over the suspension of his account — a renewed focus will be on the show and how it spoofs the president and his policies.
Colbert’s series was canceled by CBS in July and will conclude its 10-year run next year in May. While CBS cited financial reasons for its decision to end Colbert’s show, the host was a vocal critic of both Trump and CBS’ parent company, Paramount, which had recently settled a lawsuit with Trump just before the Federal Communications Commission approved its merger with Skydance Media (Colbert called the settlement “a big fat bribe”).
Kimmel was benched by ABC in September after the head of the FCC, a Trump appointee, threatened the network over the host’s comments about Charlie Kirk’s suspected killer. Kimmel has since returned to the air, and used his first episode back to defend free speech. Colbert and Kimmel also appeared as guests on each other’s shows Tuesday, expressing mutual support and cracking jokes at Trump’s expense. Trump has also called for NBC to ax its late-night hosts Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon, both of whom are “SNL” alums.
Now, “SNL” could be the next target of the administration’s scrutiny. Trump’s posts on social media have previously aired his disapproval for how the series mocks and satirizes him and his administration, and he has suggested investigating NBC as result.
“Nothing funny about tired Saturday Night Live on Fake News NBC!,” Trump tweeted in February 2019, during his first term in office. “Question is, how do the Networks get away with these total Republican hit jobs without retribution? Likewise for many other shows? Very unfair and should be looked into. This is the real Collusion!”
Donald Trump in 2015, the year NBC cut ties after he made comments about undocumented Mexican immigrants.
(Andrew H. Walker / Getty Images)
Over the years, Trump has had a contentious relationship with the network that once aired “The Apprentice,” the show that made him a reality TV star, and his Miss Universe pageant. In 2015, NBC cut ties with Trump over comments he made about undocumented Mexican immigrants.
“Saturday Night Live,” which celebrated its 50th anniversary earlier this year with multiple specials, has been churning out political parodies for decades, and its comedy has targeted leaders from all political backgrounds.
The first time Trump was portrayed on “SNL” was in 1988 by then-cast member Phil Hartman. Since then, a host of actors and cast members have cycled through with their Trump impressions, with one of the most memorable being Alec Baldwin, who took over from Darrell Hammond in 2016 ahead of the presidential election.
Trump disliked Baldwin’s portrayal, and wrote in 2018 that Baldwin’s “dying mediocre career was saved by his terrible impersonation.” Baldwin won an Emmy for supporting actor in 2017 for playing the president.
The “30 Rock” actor’s stint as Trump on “SNL” lasted through 2020, and he made appearances as Trump even when the show was filming remotely during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of his most memorable moments impersonating the president were in cold opens that mocked the debates between Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Alec Baldwin in 2017 as President-elect Donald J. Trump during a “Saturday Night Live” cold open sketch.
(Will Heath / NBC)
In March 2019, Trump wrote that “SNL” continues “knocking the same person (me), over & over, without so much of a mention of ‘the other side.’” The episode that aired the weekend he wrote that tweet was a rerun. “Like an advertisement without consequences,” he went on.
According to reports from the Daily Beast, Trump took a step beyond airing his grievances over Twitter that time. He reportedly asked advisors and lawyers in early 2019 about what the FCC, the court system, and even the Department of Justice could do to look into “SNL” and other late-night comedy figures who had mocked him. That inquiry did not amount to any actions, according to the outlet.
In 2022, Trump said the show’s ratings were “HUUUGE!” when he hosted, but that they’ve since tapered off. The most recent season of “SNL” was the most-watched in three years, with a season average of more than 8 million viewers.
He went on to write that creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels is “angry and exhausted, the show even more so. It was once good, never great, but now, like the Late Night Losers who have lost their audience but have no idea why, it is over for SNL — A great thing for America!”
Michaels, who rarely gives interviews, reflected on the cancellation of Colbert’s show and what it means for late-night television in an August conversation with Puck News. Michaels said he was “stunned” by CBS’ cancellation of “The Late Show,” but added, “I don’t think any of us are going to ever know” if the decision was political.
“Whatever crimes Trump is committing, he’s doing it in broad daylight,” Michaels went on to say. “There is absolutely nothing that the people who vote for him — or me — don’t know.” He also called Trump a “really powerful media figure” who “knows how to hold an audience.”
“His politics are obviously not my politics, but denouncing [him] doesn’t work,” he added.
While many cold opens and “Weekend Update” segments have been dedicated to skewering the president, often making him the butt of jokes, the cold open in the episode immediately following the 2024 election had a different approach. Trump’s opponent, then-Vice President Kamala Harris, had appeared on an episode just days before the election, but after Trump’s victory, the cast promised they had “been with [him] all along,” adding that they all voted for him and supported him.
“If you’re keeping some sort of list of your enemies, then we should not be on that list,” they said before debuting their new Trump impression, “Hot jacked Trump,” which featured impressionist James Austin Johnson in a muscle tee and a headband.
Johnson began portraying the president on the series in 2021, and Michaels said he will continue in the role for Season 51. His portrayal mirror’s Trump’s speech patterns and his tendency to veer into tangents about pop culture. Since Trump’s inauguration in January, the cold opens have zeroed in on Trump, focusing on his relationship with Elon Musk and his policies.
The “Weekend Update” segment, hosted by Colin Jost and Michael Che, tends to take sharper jabs the president’s policies and comments, as well as other administration officials.
In the Puck interview, Michaels implied the show wasn’t going to back down, and when he was asked whether political comedy will be tougher in the current climate, Michaels said no.
“I don’t think anybody knows what Michael Che’s politics are,” he said, “but they do think he’s funny.”
Brendan Carr, the chairman of the FCC who has been in the headlines for his role in Kimmel’s benching, wrote in 2020 that political satire is one of the “oldest and most important forms of free speech.”
“From Internet memes to late-night comedians, from cartoons to the plays and poems as old as organized government itself — Political Satire circumvents traditional gatekeepers & helps hold those in power accountable,” he continued. “Not surprising that it’s long been targeted for censorship.”
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‘The Girlfriend’ stars Robin Wright and Olivia Cooke on the real villain
This article contains spoilers for the finale of Prime Video’s “The Girlfriend.”
After reading the pilot for “The Girlfriend,” Robin Wright could see how the entire series would unfold. She was initially approached to direct the first episode, but she was so entranced by the adaptation of Michelle Frances’ 2017 novel she came on board not just as a director, but as an executive producer.
And when it came to casting Laura, a fierce matriarch committed to protecting her son, Daniel, from his new girlfriend, everyone she pictured in the role was unavailable.
“My dream was Tilda Swinton,” Wright says, speaking from the Ham Yard Hotel in London alongside her co-star Olivia Cooke, whose Prime Video series premiered Wednesday. “The time crunch was getting narrower, so Jonathan Cavendish of Imaginarium [Productions] finally said, ‘Would you consider playing Laura? You know her so well.’ What interested me was expanding on each character and developing this show beyond the book, which was already very full and rich.”
Cooke was Wright’s first choice to play Cherry, Daniel’s working-class girlfriend, who may or may not have suspicious motives and a violent past. The actors hopped on a Zoom call at the end of 2023 and were immediately on the same page about the thriller series. Both were intrigued by the idea that each episode depicted the characters’ individual takes on the events, forcing viewers to frequently change their allegiance about who is right. Is Cherry deviously trying to push Laura aside for better access to Daniel, or is Laura paranoid and overbearing?
Cherry (Olivia Cooke), Daniel’s working-class girlfriend. (Christopher Raphael / Prime)
Laura (Robin Wright) is suspicious of Cherry and her motives. (Christopher Raphael / Prime)
“I was enticed by the dual perspectives and delving more into that reality because that is how we operate,” Wright says. “That is the human condition. You perceive [something] in a different way than I do. We’re all a hero of our own story and of our own perspective, but we could be the villain in someone else’s perspective. That’s what happens with Cherry and Laura. Jealousy turns into a power struggle.”
“It’s really fun to dial up the maliciousness and the duplicitous nature of a woman,” Cooke adds. “To play all these different sides and all these different faculties. And both our characters contain them all.”
“It was almost like having the variety pack of being a female,” Wright continues. “It’s easy for the viewer to go back and forth, where you’ll be in favor of this one and then not in favor. And it’s always rooted in true emotion. Wherever Laura or Cherry is coming from, that’s her truth. That’s her story.”
“You’ve always got to champion the characters you’re playing in order to play them honestly,” Cooke says. “I completely understood where Cherry was coming from. A lot of that is lack and fear and scarcity. Not having a parachute or a safety net, and having to constantly strive and move forward. She’s a survivor and she’s scrappy, and she will be the quickest and most ferocious to her own defense.”
The conflict between Laura and Cherry aggressively ratchets up over the course of six episodes. After a rock climbing accident that puts Daniel (Laurie Davidson) into a coma, Laura convinces Cherry that he’s died. Cherry later threatens Laura with a knife — or does she? Cooke says she loved “having the excuse to go f— feral.”
“What’s fun about Laura’s perspective is Cherry seems completely unhinged and that there’s a real malevolent undertone to her behavior,” Cooke says. “But in Cherry’s perspective, it’s all coming from a place of just scrambling. She’s tried to put her best foot forward when she meets Laura for the first time and she’s tried to cover up her past a little bit by saying the odd white lie. And a mum sniffs that out immediately.”
“What’s fun about Laura’s perspective is Cherry seems completely unhinged and that there’s a real malevolent undertone to her behavior,” Olivia Cooke says. “But in Cherry’s perspective, it’s all coming from a place of just scrambling.”
(Jennifer McCord / For The Times)
Cooke describes Cherry as an “underdog trying to claw herself up.” “I want the audience to really be of two minds about her,” she says. “And women usually have to be so buttoned up.
“It’s always, ‘You can’t say that or don’t emote that,’” Wright chimes in. “This gave us an opportunity to do what a lot of women would like to say or do, but they can’t. You always have to be a diplomat. This was about being a human being. Women are very layered individuals. We can do 16 things at once. That’s why we can carry children for nine months and then raise them. I wanted to show all of those colors of a woman.”
The role gave Cooke the chance to showcase her range and expressiveness.
“Even just for my own personal life, it felt really cathartic to be able to be angry and be able to scream and be a person who wears their emotions so closely to the surface,” Cooke adds. “Cherry is effervescent. It’s always there waiting to come out. She’s so reactive. And I’m hypervigilant for the warning signs before I react. This was like a rage room.”
In the tumultuous finale, Laura drugs Daniel to keep him away from Cherry. After Cherry breaks into Laura’s house, the duo find themselves in a physical altercation in the basement swimming pool. An addled Daniel discovers them fighting and jumps in to protect Cherry, accidentally holding his mother under the water for too long. The immediate interpretation is that Laura dies at the hand of her son, which is what the actors shot on set in London last year.
“There was an aerial shot of mom dead in his arms,” Wright says. “It was beautiful. He was holding her and he looks at Cherry and mom was dead in his arms in the way I had held him in Spain. But the [producers] cut it out because it showed that she had died.”
Laurie Davidson, who plays Daniel, and Robin Wright in a scene from “The Girlfriend.”
(Christopher Raphael / Prime)
The decision to have Daniel accidentally kill (or not kill) Laura resulted from a “big discussion,” as Wright puts it. The obvious conclusion was to have Cherry purposefully murder Laura, but Wright pushed against that.
“I said, ‘It needs to be the son that kills his mother because he will never get out of her clutches when she’s alive,’” Wright says. “He’s going to be in the middle of this war zone for the rest of his life. When he comes down [to the pool], he’s in a stupor. He’s almost hallucinating. When he dives in the pool and he sees [Laura] trying to drown his girlfriend, he doesn’t know what’s happened prior to that moment, which is she’s tried to kill mom. He has no sense of time and space because he’s under the influence.”
Cooke says she didn’t play the scene as Cherry wanting Laura to die. “Maybe people will read it as that, but I didn’t,” Cooke says. “She knows it’s gone too far. That’s what I played in the moment, shouting at Daniel to snap out of it. But, you know, she did get the house.”
Shooting the pool altercation was a challenging day. Much of the series was filmed in a private house in London’s St. John’s Wood neighborhood, which had an actual swimming pool in the basement. Although the pool was supposedly heated, the actors didn’t experience any warmth.
“It was f— hard,” Wright recalls. “For me, it was like waterboarding. People think, ‘Oh, my God, so much fun to act in those scenes.’ No, it’s not. It’s really tough. We were all drowned rats and freezing cold.”
Still, Cooke says it was enjoyable to go to such intense limits emotionally.
“It’s fun being able to go to the very edge of your emotional capacity in a very safe, fun, embracing environment,” she says. “We wouldn’t have been able to do that in the pool, and be able to try and murder each other and then laugh, if it wasn’t built on trust and love. … These characters do very heightened, crazy stuff, but it’s still seeped in honesty and naturalism, which you need in order to go on this journey.”
Robin Wright recalls how difficult shooting the pool scene was: “For me, it was like waterboarding.” Nevertheless, Olivia Cooke says it was “fun being able to go to the very edge of your emotional capacity.” (Jennifer McCord / For The Times)
At the end of the finale, Cherry and Daniel move into Laura’s mansion with the blessing of Daniel’s father, Howard (Waleed Zuaiter). Daniel discovers a voicemail from Laura recounting how Cherry’s mother, Tracey (Karen Henthorn), warned of her daughter’s malicious motives. But while Daniel is clearly in trouble, Wright says you’re not necessarily meant to interpret it as Laura being completely out of the picture.
“We wanted to leave it a little bit open,” she says. “You see the pregnant family living in the Sanderson house and mommy’s gone. Could Laura still be alive? Did she really die? Has she just been shunned to the priory?”
Wright says they wanted to leave it to the audience to decide what happened.
“But Daniel is awakened,” she adds. “If Laura is alive, he could go back to her and say, ‘I now believe you and now I’m with a crazy woman and afraid she’s going to kill me in my sleep.’ There are many iterations where it can go if there is a Season 2.”
As of this interview, no announcement has been made about another season. Cooke, who also stars as Alicent Hightower in “House of the Dragon,” says she would have to get permission from HBO to be part of a concurrent episodic series. Plus, as Wright notes, it’s all about the algorithm. “You always have to wait and see if it’s a semi-success,” Wright says. She adds, turning to Cooke, “If there is a Season 2, I think you should kill the cat in Episode 1, gut it and wear it as a hat.”
For Wright, that’s part of the appeal of being an executive producer — she could brainstorm all the unhinged things that could happen between the characters. She loved coming up with story ideas and character backgrounds, and helping to sculpt the ending, which differs from the novel, was pure joy.
“This was my first opportunity to develop something from the ground up,” says Robin Wright, who executive produces and is a director on the series. “I took a bunch of personal stories, things that I’ve heard, and threw them in there.”
(Jennifer McCord / For The Times)
“This was my first opportunity to develop something from the ground up,” Wright says. “I took a bunch of personal stories, things that I’ve heard, and threw them in there. Like Laura kissing her son on the lips — that came from a friend of mine. And Laura spraying Cherry with her perfume in a shop and saying, ‘Daniel loves this,’ came from someone on set. Things were constantly percolating.”
Wright directed the first three episodes, setting the visual and thematic tone for the series, while Andrea Harkin took on the latter three. The actor says there was a real freedom on set, which was helped by the rehearsals the cast was able to do before filming. She made it a point to always give the actors their own take for each scene.
“Generally, I’d use the take where they went for a free-for-all,” she says. “You get locked in a box as actors. We all do. You pick a choice and you stick with that choice. But when you throw that out the window, the s— that comes out of actors is amazing. That’s what’s so beautiful about being able to direct and being an actor myself. I love watching how it evolves and the light that comes out of them and the emotion that’s brought to the surface.”
“I’ve never acted opposite my director before,” Cooke adds. “The chain of command was so short. Robin was acting with me, but also watching to see what I do and changing her performance to my reaction, which was amazing. It makes it very alive and kinetic.”
Ultimately, it’s up to the viewer to decide whether Laura or Cherry is the villain of “The Girlfriend.” And, as Wright says, it’s simply a matter of how you see things.
“You as the viewer get to decide: Is there a truth, or is it just subjective?” she says. “Because it is subjective for each of our perspectives and we own it. It happened the way you personally know it happened. But the truth lies somewhere in between.”
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With hit ABC series ‘Will Trent,’ Ramón Rodriguez changed the game
ABC’s “Will Trent” is no ordinary police procedural.
“There’s a thousand cop shows,” said Ramón Rodriguez, who portrays the show’s main character, Will Trent. “How do you make this one stand out?”
The broadcast drama series, which also airs on Hulu, centers special agent Trent: a dapper investigator whose instinctual crime-solving skills render him essential to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. But beneath the three-piece suit, there’s a more complex side to Trent, who navigates the residual trauma from being abandoned at birth and growing up in the Atlanta foster care system. He is also dyslexic.
“One of the exciting things when I came onto the show was not knowing where this character was from,” said Rodriguez, 45. “Trent was very much [written as] a colorless character.”
Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Rodriguez greeted me on a Zoom call from his present home in Southern California, while wearing a New York Knicks cap. Before “Will Trent,” he previously played the first main Hispanic character on the HBO series “The Wire,” and appeared in films such as 2009’s “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” and “G20,” a thriller featuring Viola Davis, which premiered April 10 on Amazon Prime Video.
Since the 2023 premiere of “Will Trent,” Rodriguez has molded his beloved character in many ways; he’s a hard-nosed detective with a mushy side, which is most evident in scenes with his pocket-sized chihuahua named Betty. Based on Karin Slaughter’s New York Times-bestselling novel series “Will Trent,” showrunners Liz Heldens and Daniel Thomsen organically tailored the titular role to reflect Rodriguez’s real-life Puerto Rican identity. It’s a major win for Latinos in an industry that otherwise lacks Latino-led programming.
“Once we run out of feeling fresh, creative, excited and inspired, then I think we start phoning it in,” said Rodriguez. “But that’s something I’m not interested in and I know my partners aren’t either.”
Rodriguez has taken on roles behind the camera as well. He directed “I’m a Guest Here,” the first episode of Season 3, which wrapped earlier this month; he was also named an executive producer. “I really wanted to be a part of the creative collaboration of creating this character in this show,” said Rodriguez.
When Season 3 dropped a bombshell regarding Trent’s biological father, it paved the way for a nail-biting Season 4, which was confirmed earlier this year.
This interview has been edited and shortened for clarity. It also reveals Season 3 spoilers.
In the books, Will Trent isn’t Puerto Rican, but this series is peeking into your own Puerto Rican identity. What are your thoughts on that?
It was a topic that they were curious about exploring. Where does Will come from as an orphan who grew up in the foster care system? Identity becomes a focal point for someone like that. Again [him being Puerto Rican] isn’t in the books, which is kind of exciting. We’ve been able to separate and say that the books are the books.
It wasn’t something that we were trying to sort of check a box and say, “Great, Will’s heritage is Puerto Rican.” It was a very organic explanation of this character discovering who he is.
When you were cast for the lead, did you ever picture the show as what it is today?
You never know what’s gonna work and why it’s gonna work. You don’t have control of a lot of things in this business. The one thing I do have control over is my work, what I can bring to it, what I try to do. This is the first time I’ve been on a show that’s gone on for this long from the pilot.
If you would’ve asked me that, is this gonna be the show that goes past one season? I probably would’ve said, “I don’t think so.” And it’s nothing against the show, you just don’t know. It took a minute for me to be fully convinced, but I’m so grateful that they were willing to continue having conversations with me and that they were really willing to have me on as a partner because that was important to me.
It doesn’t feel like the show hinges on those elements of identity. Why is it important to keep that balance in this procedural show?
[Solving cases is] another aspect of the show that I know audiences love. I just think the things that tend to pull our hearts to the things that are emotional and personal things, what someone’s struggling with or how are they overcoming it.
In Season 3, we have a really pivotal moment where Will accidentally shoots a bad guy, but ends up killing a young boy by accident. That case ended up changing the rest of the season — he was not able to recover from that event of having the boy die in his arms. That was Episode 11 and that will likely go into Season 4.
Your dog Betty also shines in Season 3. We get to hear her voice for the first time which happens during a fun hallucination scene. What was it like to film that episode?
That was two episodes after this tragic episode I just described, which is crazy, right? We wanted to mix levity and humor with our heavy drama and emotional stuff.
So as Will was entering this case that involved a cult, he gets caught undercover and in that process he gets drugged. Liz Heldens, one of our showrunners, had been dying to find a way to get me to dance on this show, and I was like “Listen: Will Trent is an awkward individual, he’s not someone that’s out here dancing.” She was like, “Well, what if that’s a hallucination?” I was like, “That’s brilliant!” Anything can happen while he’s tripping.
I remember I was walking on set and one of our production assistants, Tim, had read the script and said, “What if Betty talks?” So I pitched that to Liz and she topped it and went, “Well, what if Betty’s British?”
You made your directorial debut in Season 3. How was that experience for you?
I felt like a kid in a candy store. By Season 3, I really understood the character and what works with our show, where our strengths are. I just got to be me in certain scenes, because at the start of the [third] season Will has left the [Georgia Bureau of Investigation], he’s got a beard and he’s in a T-shirt, jeans and curly hair.
It was also fun to direct new cast members. We introduced Gina Rodriguez, who played Marion Alba, and Antwayn Hopper, who played Rafel Wexford. Which was really fun. I’d be like: “No notes.” [Laughs.]
Will you be directing in Season 4?
I will definitely be directing at least one episode next season. It makes the most sense for me to direct the premiere as I did this past season. I love that pressure of having to set the bar for a season.
What can audiences expect for the upcoming season?
We’re about to begin these serious conversations. There were some pretty serious cliffhangers at the end of Season 3, where we find out Angie Polaski (Erika Christensen) is pregnant, and Will is definitely not the father, so that’s gonna be something to explore. Amanda Wagner (Sonja Sohn), who is a maternal figure for Will, is in the hospital bed. We just discovered his dad, [Sheriff Caleb Roussard], which we don’t know too much about, so I’d want to know more about the character and what happened with the mom. There’s just so many questions that we will get to explore — I mean, is there new love in Will’s life?
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