{"id":645193,"date":"2026-05-15T18:36:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T18:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/645193\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T18:36:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T18:36:08","slug":"jeremy-culhanes-tucker-went-viral-on-snl-it-also-sparked-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/645193\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeremy Culhane’s Tucker Went Viral on SNL. It Also Sparked Debate."},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhen Saturday Night Live<\/a> newcomer Jeremy Culhane debuted his Tucker Carlson<\/a> on Weekend Update last month, the response was immediate. The impression \u2014 built around Carlson\u2019s rising incredulity and a jagged, brittle laugh \u2014 quickly spread online, earning praise for its sharpness and timing.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut within hours, a second conversation took hold in comedy circles.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAll Tucker Carlson impressions are just Nick Mullen Tucker Carlson impressions,\u201d one widely shared post read<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe comparison pointed to Mullen, the podcast comedian who has spent years developing his own exaggerated Carlson<\/a> on shows like Cum Town and The Adam Friedland Show. His version leans heavily on a specific comedic rhythm: confusion that escalates toward outrage.<\/p>\n

\n\tCulhane\u2019s take, while not identical \u2014 he added the crazy laugh, a more recent Tucker-ism \u2014 hit enough of those same beats to spark a debate in stand-up and sketch comedy: Where is the line between observation and imitation when it comes to impressions?<\/p>\n

\n\tThere is no clear answer \u2014 at least not legally.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYou can\u2019t own anything,\u201d former SNL star Darrell Hammond<\/a>, one of the most prolific impressionists in the show\u2019s history, tells me from the road (he still tours much of the year as a standup). \u201cBut if you do it on TV enough, people will think it\u2019s yours.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat distinction between ownership and perception sits at the center of how comedy polices itself.<\/p>\n

\n\tUnlike scripted jokes, impressions exist in an ambiguous space. They are built from real people, whose voices and mannerisms are available to anyone paying attention. But the most memorable impressions are rarely straightforward imitations. They are exaggerations, shaped by specific comedic choices. The saying Hammond has heard passed around SNL\u2018s hallways sums it up bluntly: \u201cImpressions aren\u2019t funny. Characters are funny.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHammond points to his own portrayal of Bill Clinton as an example. A physical tic \u2014 what he describes as the \u201cthumb and lip thing\u201d \u2014 became a defining feature of the impression, even though Clinton himself never actually did it. He road-tested it one night at the Comedy Cellar; the place exploded, so he brought it uptown to the SNL writers. The tic became a staple. Soon the competition noticed how well it worked.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThen you\u2019d see other impressionists doing it,\u201d Hammond says. \u201cBut I had been doing it on SNL for two years. It\u2019s pretty much mine at that point. People will think that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe same dynamic has played out repeatedly on SNL, where a single performer\u2019s interpretation can effectively lock in how a public figure is caricatured. Dana Carvey\u2019s George H.W. Bush and Will Ferrell\u2019s George W. Bush became so dominant that later attempts to play those figures struggled to land.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt became impossible for anybody to do George Bush after Will Ferrell did his version so powerfully,\u201d Hammond says. \u201cThey wanted me to follow him. I was like, \u2018I can\u2019t do it.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat distinguishes those performances is not accuracy but perspective \u2014 the \u201ctake,\u201d as comedians call it. Hammond spent a year at the Comedy Cellar trying to crack Al Gore and never got a laugh. Then, the afternoon of the live broadcast, writer Jim Downey came to his dressing room and did a line reading. Gore, Downey had decided, was an overbearing schoolteacher. Hammond suddenly had his character. It didn\u2019t sound much like Gore, but audiences responded to it every time.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAl Gore doesn\u2019t really sound like that,\u201d Hammond said. \u201cWhat I was doing was [Al] Hirschfeld drawings.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe describes the process as something closer to caricature than mimicry \u2014 and once the caricature has been solved, he says, others can reproduce it with relative ease.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf you see a statue at the Museum of Modern Art, you could probably imitate that statue pretty easily,\u201d he says. \u201cBut you couldn\u2019t create a David.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat idea that once an impression has been \u201csolved,\u201d it becomes easier for others to reproduce, helps explain why debates like the one surrounding Culhane and Mullen recur.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tMullen\u2019s version of Carlson, developed over years in the podcast space, leans into long stretches of escalating confusion. For some, the tell is even more specific. It uses a repeated reliance on the phrase \u201cwhat is going on?\u201d as a kind of anchor for Carlson\u2019s bewilderment. Paul Gallant, a sports podcaster, put it bluntly on social media<\/a>: \u201cLike my terrible impression of Nick Mullen doing Tucker Carlson, this is also an impression of Nick Mullen doing Tucker Carlson. The giveaway is the reliance on \u2018what is going on?’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in comedy, the medium is the message. While Mullen\u2019s work circulates primarily through podcasts and online clips, SNL remains one of the most powerful amplifiers of funny. An impression that airs on the show can quickly become the default version for a broad audience, regardless of where similar ideas may have originated.<\/p>\n

\n\tHammond acknowledges that imbalance as part of the reality of the business.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere used to be a comic who would steal jokes and then do them on Letterman,\u201d he says. \u201cOnce he did that, people would go, \u2018Okay, the joke\u2019s gone. It\u2019s his now.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNeither Culhane nor Mullen has publicly addressed the comparison. Representatives for both did not respond to requests for comment. Within comedy, that silence is not unusual. There is no formal system for resolving disputes over impressions, and performers often avoid escalating them publicly \u2014 Hammond among them.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhy give them a squabble that could lead to any fucking thing, including legal conflicts,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd legal conflicts just ain\u2019t no fun and they\u2019re real expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tInstead, the conversation tends to play out informally, among audiences and peers. And the audience, Hammond has come to understand, is ultimately the one who decides.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s not that you own it,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s that the audience thinks you do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Saturday Night Live newcomer Jeremy Culhane debuted his Tucker Carlson on Weekend Update last month, the response…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[278424,88,12015,39690,92],"class_list":["post-645193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-darrell-hammond","tag-entertainment","tag-saturday-night-live","tag-tucker-carlson","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}