Saturday Night Live is adding a big name to play one of the presidential candidates in its coming season.
Jim Carrey will play Democratic nominee Joe Biden in the show’s 46th season, which debuts Oct. 3. SNL has also added three new featured players to its cast and announced it will have a “limited” studio audience for its coming season.
On the latter front, the show says it will work with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office to determine a safe procedure for admitting a live audience to Studio 8H in Rockefeller Center. If it comes to pass, SNL will be among the first shows that normally feature an audience to bring in-studio viewers back. HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher had a studio audience of 25 people for last week’s installment.
Carrey, who’s coming off Showtime’s Kidding and feature film Sonic the Hedgehog, will be the third person to play Biden on SNL this year. Woody Harrelson and former castmember Jason Sudeikis — who portrayed the former vice president during much of the Obama administration — played Biden in sketches during season 45.
Alec Baldwin is expected to continue playing Donald Trump in sketches, and former SNL regular Maya Rudolph will return as Biden’s running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, executive producer Lorne Michaels told Vulture.
The new featured players are actress and Upright Citizens Brigade alum Lauren Holt (Parent Teacher Conference), stand-up comic and actress Punkie Johnson (Space Force, Bill Burr Presents: The Ringers) and Andrew Dismukes, who’s been a staff writer on the show the past three seasons. All of last season’s cast is set to return as well.
Additionally, the show has partnered with four well-known comedy training programs — UCP, The PIT, Second City and The Groundlings — to fund a scholarship program for students from diverse backgrounds looking to further their comedy careers.
(Excerpt) Read more in: The Hollywood Reporter