- Beck Bennett said he was “nervous” to parody Vladimir Putin on Saturday Night Live.
- The comedian admitted that it might have been “silly” to fear retaliation from the Russian president.
- Bennett also said that his SNL impression made it onto Russian TV at one point: “He knows about it!”
Beck Bennett was a little apprehensive to mock Vladimir Putin.
The comedian recalled playing the Russian president on Saturday Night Live during an interview with Dana Carvey and David Spade on their podcast Fly on the Wall.
“Were you scared they’d be after you?” Spade asked.
“Oh yeah, yeah,” Bennett confirmed, noting that a clip of his Putin impression circulated on Russian TV at one point. “I was like, ‘He knows about it!'”
Bennett admitted that he thought his anxiety over the situation might be unwarranted.
“At the same time, I’m like, it’s silly that I would get nervous,” he said. “He would never come for me. That’d be stupid, even if he wanted to.”
That rationale wasn’t always comforting, though.
“There was definitely a couple of moments of like, ‘Should I be doing this? Is this weird?'” he recalled. “He’s known for poisoning.”
Indeed, Putin and his allies have been repeatedly accused of poisoning Russian defectors and political opponents on several occasions over the last two decades, with alleged assassination attempts on figures like Alexander Litvinenko, Sergei Skripal, and Aleksey Navalny.
Emma McIntyre/WireImage
Bennett first played his shirtless Putin in a Family Feud sketch in 2016, and reprised the character throughout the 2016-2017 season. Perhaps most memorably, Bennett played a “Putie” in the cold open of the season 42 episode hosted by Aziz Ansari on Jan. 21, 2017 — the first episode after Donald Trump’s first inauguration.
That sketch saw Putin take credit for Trump’s electoral victory, and joked about Russia’s manipulation of American politics.
“I promise that we will take care of America. It’s the most expensive thing we’ve ever bought,” Bennett said as Putin. “I know many of you Americans are skeptical of President Trump. Many Russians were skeptical of me at first, too. But today, nobody ever seems to hear from any of them. It’s like they’re gone! It always works out.”
Sign up for Entertainment Weekly’s free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.
On Fly on the Wall, Bennett explained how his smoldering, uber-confident Putin didn’t actually bear that much resemblance to the Russian leader’s real temperament.
“His real voice is more like this little high pitch,” he said.
However, Bennett enjoyed rendering Putin as a macho caricature because it presented no pressure to mimic the politician accurately.
“That was the impression I feel like that I really did that thing that they try to teach you,” he recalled. “You don’t have to do an exact impression — just capture the essence and have fun with it.”
Bennett, who left SNL in 2021 after eight seasons, recently returned to play Putin in “The White POTUS” sketch in April. In that sketch, which spoofed season 3 of HBO’s The White Lotus, Bennett’s Putin offers to dance with Marcello Hernández’s Marco Rubio and later caresses James Austin Johnson’s Trump.
“I was like, ‘Yes, I will absolutely do “White POTUS,”‘” Bennett recalled of the sketch. “It was so funny. It was so perfect.”
Listen to the full conversation between Bennett, Spade, and Carvey above.
