Jim Carrey is done playing President-elect Joe Biden on Saturday Night Live.
The veteran comedian announced his departure in a tweet posted on Saturday ahead of the show’s Christmas episode. “Though my term was only meant to be 6 weeks,I was thrilled to be elected as your SNL President…comedy’s highest call of duty,” Carey wrote. “I would love to go forward knowing that Biden was the victor because I nailed that shit. But I am just one in a long line of proud, fighting SNL Bidens!”
Carrey’s tenure as Biden was met with mixed reaction from fans and critics alike. In a recent piece for Consequence of Sound questioning whether SNL should consider replacing Carrey, contributor Jesse Hassenger argued that SNL isn’t “a format that works particularly well for Carrey, a stranger and less predictable comic presence than the mark-hitting graduates that SNL trains every year.”
To that point, Carrey’s portrayal of Biden often ventured into the surreal. In a tortured riff on the fly that landed on Mike Pence during the Vice Presidential debate, Carrey’s Biden went through a teleporter that turned him into Jeff Goldblum’s man-fly hybrid from the David Cronenberg film The Fly. Another cold open saw Carrey’s Biden switch into a Mr. Rogers guise (inspired by a much-mocked tweet suggesting that Biden’s resemblance to Mr. Rogers was a very bad thing), followed by a foray into Bob Ross territory.
It remains to be seen who SNL will pick to portray Biden going forward, though one obvious candidate is former cast member Jason Sudeikis, whose past impersonation of the President-elect was met with much more positive reviews. Woody Harrelson also previously portrayed Biden for SNL.
Though my term was only meant to be 6 weeks,I was thrilled to be elected as your SNL President…comedy’s highest call of duty. I would love to go forward knowing that Biden was the victor because I nailed that shit. But I am just one in a long line of proud, fighting SNL Bidens!
— Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) December 19, 2020
