One of Ana Gasteyer’s most intriguing “Saturday Night Live” moments actually occurred long before she joined the show in 1996.
Gasteyer grew up in Washington, D.C., and was friends with President Jimmy Carter’s daughter, Amy, so imagine her shock when she caught the president taking in Dan Aykroyd’s impression of him when she slept over at the White House one time when she was a young girl.
“We walked by, and President Carter was watching ‘Saturday Night Live,’” she said while co-hosting TODAY with Jenna & Friends on Feb. 11.
“And he was watching — it would’ve been I guess 1977 — he was watching Dan Aykroyd portray him, doing the impression and laughing, laughing, super hard, alone. In fact, that was the first beginning of the memory was hearing him laugh and then looking up and realizing.”
Gasteyer, who imitated Martha Stewart and Celine Dion during her “SNL” tenure, said she has been thinking of the late president, who died in December at the age of 100, calling him “extraordinarily humble,” while pointing out that doing an impression means more than just getting laughs.
“It is really true that imitation is the highest form of flattery, and I always do say, like with the Martha Stewart or Celine Dion or whatever that I’ve done, that there’s always this kernel of insight or some kind of reflection back on the import of a person’s impact on society,” she said.
“Something about that just registered in there for me, that the president was able to laugh at an idea of himself and see that in himself. It really was moving.”
Gasteyer has talked about the experience of seeing Carter watching Aykroyd before.
“He was laughing hysterically,” she told Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers on their “Las Culturistas” podcast last November, while noting the president had a beer and was wearing a burgundy V-neck.
Gasteyer, who called Carter “the most amazing human being” who did “incredible acts of humanity,” said that moment seeing him has remained in her mind.
“It imprinted in my brain, obviously the surrealness of like, ‘Whatever, there’s this person dressed as this person imitating this person, the leader of the free world,’” she said.
It’s a sentiment that Jenna can understand since her grandfather, former President George H.W. Bush, was famously impersonated on “Saturday Night Live” by Dana Carvey.