Tina Fey Spoofs Sarah Palin In ‘Saturday Night Live’

‘Saturday Night Live’ (SNL) on NBC, in its third season, opened with a memorable sketch, featuring Tina Fey as Sarah Palin and Amy Poehler as Hillary Clinton. This Saturday, the NBC comedy brought back the tandem of Fey and Poehler once again – though Fey reprised her role as Palin, Poehler this time around played CBS’s Katie Couric – in a skit parodying Palin’s interview earlier this week.



Though Poehler has recently announced she is leaving the long-running NBC comedy show after the November election, Fey, a former cast member and head writer of SNL, has seemingly been thrust back into regular appearances on the program. Along with Fey, another former cast member who returned on SNL was Chris Parnell - playing presidential debate moderator, Jim Lehrer, in a sketch that was a take-off on Friday night’s contest between McCain and Obama.
Fey is widely considered to look like Palin, and SNL executive producer, Lorne Michaels, persuaded her to ride the show’s hot hand. Her first appearance as the Alaskan governor two weeks ago was a huge hit, helping boost the premiere’s ratings and garnering attention online.
In Saturday’s spoof an actual interview Couric conducted with Palin, Poehler mostly played straight man to Fey, who ratcheted up her performance of Senator John McCain’s running mate by satirizing her foreign affairs’ experience.
When Poehler pressed Fey’s Palin to specifically discuss how she would help spread democracy abroad, the reaction was: “Katie, I’d like to use one of my lifelines... I want to phone a friend.”
A puzzled Poehler informed her that wasn’t how the interview worked, to which Fey recited one of Palin’s most quoted lines from the interview: “Well, in that case, I'm just gonna have to get back to ya.”
At one point, when Poehler’s character, Couric, tells Fey: “Forgive me Mrs. Palin, but it seems to me that when cornered, you become increasingly adorable. Is that fair to say?”, Fey responds with “I don’t know -- is it?”, looks into the camera, strikes a pose and flashes a big smile.