When Saturday Night Live returns next month for the first of five straight shows before the presidential election, viewers may get to see Kate McKinnon’s beloved impersonation of the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg one last time. That’s according to executive producer Lorne Michaels, who, when asked by the New York Times if McKinnon was hanging up the impression now that Ginsburg had died, said, “I doubt it.”
Often loath to elaborate in interviews, Michaels added nothing further about how Saturday Night Live would pay tribute to Ginsburg, who died last week. In the wake of her death, McKinnon released a statement expressing admiration for the Supreme Court justice and honor to have gotten to play her on the sketch comedy series.
“For so many of us, Justice Ginsburg was a real-life superhero: a beacon of hope, a warrior for justice, a robed crusader who saved the day time and again,” McKinnon said. “Playing her on SNL was a profound joy because I could always feel the overwhelming love and gratitude that the audience had for her. It was one of the great honors of my life to meet Justice Ginsburg, to shake her hand, and to thank her for her lifetime of service to this country.”
After finishing its 45th season with three at-home broadcasts produced remotely, Saturday Night Live will return to Studio 8H inside New York’s Rockefeller Center on October 3 with an episode hosted by former cast member Chris Rock. The Fargo star found himself at the center of an SNL controversy this past summer when a sketch from 2000 that featured Jimmy Fallon doing a blackface impression of Rock went viral. Fallon apologized for the offensive sketch—he wore dark makeup and affected an accent to mimic Rock’s distinctive voice—which Rock later deemed “bad comedy.” Of Fallon, however, the comedian added, “Hey, man, I’m friends with Jimmy. Jimmy’s a great guy. And he didn’t mean anything. A lot of people want to say intention doesn’t matter, but it does. And I don’t think Jimmy Fallon intended to hurt me. And he didn’t.”
Speaking for the first time about the uproar surrounding the sketch, Michaels said it was hard for him to recall the incident, despite video of it available online.