Not so long ago, Darrell Hammond set the new record for longest-running cast member on “Saturday Night Live,” possibly because – as he admitted recently – he never walked into the show with the agenda of moving on to bigger and better things. Whatever his reasons for sticking around, he’s been rewarded with the honor of being the first cast member to receive a retrospective of his best work while still remaining within the show’s ranks. NBC offered Hammond up to the press for a teleconference earlier this week, and Bullz-Eye got the opportunity to ask him a few questions. Our only disappointment was that he offered kind of a non-answer to the one we were hoping would result in a really juicy response. Oh, well…
Bullz-Eye: Hey, Darrell, how’s it going?
Darrell Hammond: Hi, Will!
BE: So who were some of your impressionist influences? Or did you really have any?
DH: I think that my mother was probably better than I was, although she wasn’t interested in that as a career; she was a secretary and a homemaker. Beyond her, I think it was Rich Little, Frank Gorshin, and then particularly as time went by, Eddie Murphy.
BE: Is there any impression that you tried to get but you just didn’t feel like you got it?
DH: Well, I think that it would be the two times I tried to do President Bush on the air. It just went so poorly for me, and I was aware when I was out there that I had no real basic understanding of how to do this guy. I knew he was so complex, and I got the thing on short notice, and this is one of those instances where, in the time that was allotted to me, I was never able to get it. I was never able. I ran out of time.
BE: And when the critics start – as they invariably do – throwing around phrases like, “oh, the show’s gone wildly uneven again”…
DH: Right…
BE: …do you ever just feel like going, “Hey, I’m an impressionist! I can do anybody! Just bring me in!”
DH: No, I don’t. I know that…the fact is, with the exception of that one impression, most of the time when I can’t do an impression, they won’t put me out there. There have been times when I’ve been out there doing an impression that went well for me during the week and, for some reason, when I went out there on the air… (Pauses) There was a sketch recently where I had to run across the theater and jump in the chair and act like I’ve been there the whole time. And sometimes I’m not on the air and I just don’t have a good performance. But I try to never sink below the level of “pretty good,” and I try to shoot upward from there.
BE: And I know they used to call Phil Hartman the glue of “Saturday Night Live.” What do they call you?
DH: I don’t know what they call me. I call myself the field-goal kicker; y’know, I get plugged in sometime during the week. If I’m lucky, it’s on Wednesday, but a lot of times, it’s on Thursday or Friday…so there’s a lot of times that I’ll go into read-through and, in a 45-sketch read-through, I might really only have 3 or 4 things, and then maybe I’ll get something later in the week. But I don’t know what they call me. I wish I knew what they call me. In fact, maybe next week when I go back over there, I’ll ask them.
BE: Alright, thanks!
DH: Thanks a lot.
