Saturday Night Live cast member James Austin Johnson has admitted it was “pretty nerve-wracking” to impersonate Adam Driver to his face. Johnson memorably included the Star Wars actor as in a “Weekend Update” commentary.

Johnson is known for his impressions on the NBC late-night show, including playing both current president Donald Trump and former president Joe Biden. However, Johnson told GQ that he was most worried about having to impersonate Driver during a rehearsal with him.

“Doing Adam Driver to Adam Driver. Pretty nerve-racking,” he recalled. “I love doing Adam Driver. I love Kylo Ren. I love Marriage Story. I love Girls. I love everything he does. I think he is hilarious and a little bit of a genius artist, and I like doing my impression of him.”

“Doing Adam Driver to Adam Driver. Pretty nerve-racking.”

Johnson acknowledged that the very concept of impressions is “kind of demeaning,” so he wasn’t sure how Driver would react.

“[Driver] is huge. Like, he's both a terrifying man as a presence. And he's an intimidating artist,” the comedian said. “You typically don't get 'em both. You don't typically get a soldier who's a poet. And so I’m doing my impression of him to him, and he was just at the opposite end of the table, just arms folded, kicked back, just watching me with a pretty scary look on his face, watching me do him. I think as much fun as he has, I don't think anybody necessarily directly clowns on him all that much. And .”

Johnson went on: “I just had to shove it all down and try to do the best Adam Driver I could. He said he thought it was funny. .”

[Driver] is huge. Like, he's both a terrifying man as a presence. And he's an intimidating artist.

The SNL cast member also singled out Loki star Owen Wilson for a bonding moment during Johnson’s first-ever sketch in 2021’s season 47 premiere.

“I mean, ,” he noted. “So it was both of our first episodes and we were both learning how to read cue cards at the same time. And I don't know, we just kind of got along.”

Johnson suggested that he may have got along with Wilson so well because they both come from a Southern background.

“He's from Texas. Half of my family's from Texas, and my wife is from Houston. So we bonded on the whole Houston, Wes Anderson of it all,” he said. “And his brothers were there. I'm in a three-brothers family just like him. So I think it was the mix of the Southernness and the newness and finding out how to do the show together.”

Johnson continued: “I played Biden in that first episode and they let me do a sketch I wrote. I'm cool, but it's a different kind of cool. So for Owen to be psyched about the sketch I wrote where Joe Buck is trying to promote another comedy that's on Fox—you know, how sportscasters sometimes have to talk about a sitcom that's on later that week. And Owen was a big booster of it. I think he just was really excited about playing Troy Aikman in it.”

Saturday Night Live airs at 11.30pm ET on NBC. An SNL 50th anniversary special will air on February 15 on NBC.

Source: GQ

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