Rudolph laughed when recalling her canned impression of the former president, “I did not have a take on Barack Obama at all.”

Maya Rudolph reveals what Barack Obama told her after unaired SNL sketch: ‘Still don’t know what that means’

Rudolph laughed when recalling her canned impression of the former president, "I did not have a take on Barack Obama at all."

By Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman is a news writer for with previous work in MUBI Notebook, Slant, and the LA Review of Books.

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December 29, 2025 2:00 p.m. ET

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Maya Rudolph and Barack Obama. Credit:

Pool/Getty;Mike Coppola/Getty

Barack Obama is so rhetorically gifted, he can shut down a sketch with a single comment that no one even understands.**

"Do you want to tell everyone the first time you met Barack Obama and who you were dressed as?" Amy Poehler asked her old pal Maya Rudolph during a recent live taping of her *Good Hang *podcast.

"Yes, I would love to," Rudolph obliged.

The *Saturday Night Live *vets proceeded to recall Rudolph first encountering the 44th president "dressed as Shirley MacLaine," and then again dressed as Obama himself. The sketch has become infamous because it never went to air — at least with Rudolph starring as Obama. After all these years, she's finally revealing why.

Maya Rudolph as Kamala Harris on 'Saturday Night Live'.

Will Heath/NBC via Getty

"It was a sketch where you and [Darrell Hammond] were Hillary and Bill Clinton at a Halloween party," Rudolph explained. "I remember Barack was new on the scene, looking smooth. And at that time, I think Barack Obama masks were popular, because he was the new candidate. So the joke was going to be that I come in like, 'I'm Barack Obama!' and then he taps me on the shoulder with his mask and takes the mask off and he goes, 'Oh my God, it's the real Barack Obama.'"

The sketch, also featuring Fred Armisen, Will Forte, Bill Hader, Simon Rich, and Jason Sudeikis as various Democratic operatives, was to air as the cold open to the fourth episode of season 33 in 2007. "We did that at dress," Rudolph said. "And that was it. We did not do it at air. Thank God."

Perplexed, Poehler asked Rudolph, "Why? Do we know why?" Rudolph's response was simple: "I do. I mean, I did not have a take on Barack Obama at all."**

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Rudolph said it was a brief and enigmatic exchange during dress rehearsal with the politician, then a senator from Illinois who had just launched his first bid for the presidency, that put a kabosh on her plan to double him in the sketch.

"I remember the first time we saw each other was when we were about to walk out onstage," she recalled. "I'm there waiting in my little Brooks Brothers suit, and I think we bound my boobs, and I used to play Scott Joplin, so I had my Scott Joplin wig on and I was standing there... he came over and I said, 'Well, what do you think?' And all he said to me was, 'I don't wear a three-button suit.' I still don't know what that means. That's like a guy knowledge thing."

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Rudolph can admit that she "didn't have a good impression" of Obama, though it's a somewhat improbable claim, given her lauded characterization of Kamala Harris during the recent presidential election cycle, and her previous appearances as former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Though Rudolph's Obama impression didn't ultimately make the cut, a revised version of the sketch did open the 2007 episode. It marked the debut of Jason Sudeikis' impression of Joe Biden, and saw Obama trade subtle barbs with Poehler's Clinton, whom he would run against and eventually defeat in the 2008 primary election. Obama was also given the honor of delivering the famed cut to credits, "Live from New York, it's *Saturday Night*!"**

You can watch the rest of Maya Rudolph's appearance on the *Good Hang *podcast above.

- Saturday Night Live

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Source: “EW Saturday”