As news broke that Attorney General Jeff Sessions resigned per President Donald Trump’s request Wednesday, fans of “Saturday Night Live” flocked to Twitter to express a collective fear: that Kate McKinnon won’t be doing her delightful impersonation of an opossum-tailed Sessions anymore.
McKinnon, who played the Republican former senator from Alabama with an innocent, boyish charm that masked his history of discriminatory policymaking, told Seth Meyers in 2017 that the idea for her to play Sessions on the show “began as a joke pitch, and it just sort of happened.”
But once she got the gig, she was thrilled because not only did he have a “joyfulness in which he proceeds,” she also knew exactly how to mimic him.
“What I noticed was … he’s got this funny little mouth, and I could always do this thing with my lip … like a turtle’s little mouth,” she explained to Meyers. “And I’ve been trying to use it, and then he popped into the world, and I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m going to use it!’”
Though McKinnon may not play Sessions on many more shows, thanks to his resignation, some people on Twitter are looking on the bright side and hoping to see her do her impersonation very soon.
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