Neither Trump nor Harris will appear on ‘SNL’ before the election, Lorne Michaels says

There will be no October surprise on “Saturday Night Live.” 

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, showrunner Lorne Michaels confirmed that he had not reached out to presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris to make appearances on the influential sketch comedy series before Election Day on Nov. 5, and does not plan to.

“You can’t bring the actual people who are running on because of election laws and the equal time provisions,” Michaels told THR. “You can’t have the main candidates without having all the candidates, and there are lots of minor candidates that are only on the ballot in, like, three states and that becomes really complicated.”

Of course, “SNL” has had candidates on before Election Day in the past, most notoriously when Donald Trump hosted in November 2015, before he became the Republican frontrunner in the 2016 election. At the time, NBC measured Trump’s time onscreen in the episode — 12 minutes and 5 seconds — and offered the same amount of free airtime to the other candidates, in compliance with the equal time rule of the Communications Act of 1934, according to THR. And in 2008, then-vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin appeared alongside her impressionist Tina Fey, but the Obama campaign didn’t press the equal time issue. This election cycle, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley made a brief appearance in a sketch in February of this year, but she was not a “main candidate.” 

This election season, however, “SNL” is sticking with impressions of the candidates. In Saturday’s season premiere, “SNL” alum Maya Rudolph reprised her take on Kamala Harris alongside guests Jim Gaffigan as vice presidential candidate Tim Walz and Andy Samberg as Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and cast members James Austin Johnson as Trump and Bowen Yang as Republican VP candidate JD Vance. 

That being said, Michaels is open to having sitting politicians on the show in the future, and said that they’re usually willing to come on “SNL” and show that they’re in on the joke when the show makes fun of them. “What’s interesting is if you say to the people that we just did that to, ‘Do you want to come on because we have a way to do it with you in it?’ They almost always say yes,” Michaels told THR.