Before Alex Moffat was busy playing slimy real estate agents on Bad Monkey and line cooks on The Bear, the actor-comedian built a name for himself doing memorable impressions on Saturday Night Live.
Moffat, who first joined SNL in 2016 as a featured player and remained on the show until 2022, portrayed many well-known figures during his six-year tenure. However, one character that especially stands out is his impression of Eric Trump.
In a new interview with Vulture, Moffat looked back on his time at SNL and revealed how he nabbed the part of Donald Trump’s middle son: “I guess I just called dibs on it.”
“Once I was in the process of possibly getting hired by the show, a friend of mine called me and said, ‘You know who you kind of look like? Eric Trump. You should work up an impression,’” Moffat explained. “I didn’t have one in time for my screen test, so I didn’t audition with it. But then, once I was hired that first week, I went over to Mikey [Day], and he was like, ‘Yeah, this is great. Let’s do something.’”
So Day, who joined SNL at the same time as Moffat, became Donald Trump Jr. and the two became a package deal, making frequent appearances as the eldest Trump brothers on “Weekend Update.”
Moffat explained that a viral campaign ad photo of siblings Eric, Don Jr., and Ivanka Trump—which sparked many memes when Trump Jr. shared it to Twitter/X in 2016—ended up being his biggest source of inspiration for playing Eric.
“We wrote an ‘Update’ that was loosely based on that picture that the three elder Trump kids put out that was like ‘Millennials for Trump,’” Moffat told Vulture. “It was Ivanka in the front and then the two boys in the back, just looking like, you know, American Psycho–type dudes. And Eric had a look on his face that I based most of the impression on.”
While the bit didn’t end up getting picked up for that “Weekend Update,” it quickly found a home elsewhere on the show. “Mikey and I were sharing a car back to the studio after shooting the first thing I ever shot on the show, which was a Margot Robbie pre-tape where she plays a librarian who turns into a demon that Bobby Moynihan wrote,” Moffat recalled. “We got a call from somebody like, ‘Hey, we’re gonna plug your impression into this other sketch.’”
The Family Feud-inspired sketch—which pitted the Trumps and Clintons against each other—featured Robbie as Ivanka, Moynihan as Chris Christie, Kate McKinnon as Kellyanne Conway, Beck Bennett as Vladimir Putin, Darrell Hammond as Bill Clinton, Melissa Villaseñor as Sarah Silverman, Cecily Strong as Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Larry David as Bernie Sanders.
“They had Margot do an Ivanka impression, and she said something like, ‘I wish my brothers were here,’” Moffat said. “And Kenan [Thompson’s] Steve Harvey goes, ‘Well, they’re not.’ And then we rose up behind her and said, ‘Yes, we are.’ I think that was us calling dibs on those two guys. Getting to do that two-man with Mikey was just about as much fun as it gets.”
During his time on SNL, Moffat portrayed a number of political figures, including Joe Biden (taking over the role from Jim Carrey), Al Franken, Gavin Newsom, Beto O’Rouke, Chuck Schumer, and Adam Schiff. He also garnered recognition for his recurring characters, including The Guy Who Just Bought a Boat and film critic Terry Fink.
Bad Monkey is streaming now on Apple TV+.
