Will Forte knows he was not the right performer to take over as George W. Bush on “Saturday Night Live” after Will Ferrell.
During his guest appearance on the latest episode of “Good Hang with Amy Poehler,” Forte told Poehler that he knew immediately it was the wrong call to cast him as Bush after Ferrell departed the sketch comedy series in 2002. “It was a huge cast. It was like 17 people,” Forte recalled of his “SNL” class. “You’re trying to get your stuff on, right? You’re trying to get noticed and then I got, somehow, the George Bush role.”
“I don’t do impersonations, and it was a match not made in heaven,” Forte said. “[Will] made it such his own thing that they should have just retired it. But, of course, you can’t retire the sitting president on ‘SNL.’ Somebody has to be doing it, and I just had to be that guy. So I was kind of a letdown for a year as Bush.”
You can watch Forte’s full “Good Hang” interview yourself in the video below.
In the same “Good Hang” episode where he opened up about his insecurity stepping into Ferrell’s shoes and made Poehler cry with laughter by singing a song from his “SNL” audition again, Forte also admitted that it took him a long time to start to feel secure and relaxed on “SNL.” When asked by Poehler if that moment ever came for him, Forte said with seemingly complete sincerity, “I started relaxing like year seven, maybe.”
For those keeping count, that means Forte — who appeared as a regular cast member on “SNL” for eight seasons from 2002 to 2010 — only started to actually relax and feel confident working on the show a year before he exited it. According to Forte, what paved the way for that eventual moment was a note he received from “SNL” creator Lorne Michaels after his third year on the show.
“Lorne called me up, and it actually was a good thing because he said, ‘Here’s your deal: You still have a writer mindset. When you write your own things, you commit to them fully and you’re really good about that. But when other people write things, you get timid,’” Forte revealed. “Of course, he was 100% right.” Michaels wanted him to learn how to “take ownership” over whatever sketch he was doing — regardless of whether he had written it or not.
“It really could have gone either way. I could have just receded into [my] shell and melted down,” Forte observed. “For some reason, it became this thing of, like, ‘Oh, it’s all gravy from here. I could have just been fired. I wasn’t fired.’ So, you know, I’ve got to give it to Lorne. He was totally right.”
