‘SNL’ Star James Austin Johnson Reveals the Key to His Trump Impression on ‘Late Night’ (Video)

thewrap.com:

the very first cold open by playing Donald Trump. Johnson had previously become a viral hit for his Trump impression, and he while on “Late Night with Seth Meyers” on Tuesday night he revealed the key to unlocking his uncanny vocal likeness.Johnson revealed that when he first started doing his Trump impression, it was born out of his anger at the president. “I’m from Nashville, Tennessee, I’m from a pretty conservative environment, I went to church like 18 times a week,” he told Myers. “So the stream of consciousness thing, I think as the more progressive member of my family – I remember the Thanksgiving where I was like, ‘I voted for Obama,’ and nothing.

So I’ve always been that guy in my family, so when Trump came on the scene I was pissed… it broke my heart for a long time, and I was a voices guy so obviously I have to try out doing a Trump.

So the first times that I tried doing a Trump it just sort of reflected my liberal black sheep anger, like ‘We’re gonna kill everybody.’”When performing his Trump impression, Johnson quickly learned that merely repeating things that Trump actually said was a buzzkill. “I was saying stuff that no one wanted to hear or I’d say things he actually said, and I just remember the audience always yanking back, especially as I got the voice – as I started sounding like him and I would just say horrific things, people hated it.

And you’re performing in noisy bars all the time, you don’t want them to be quiet with no laughs. That means you touched on something that everybody hates.”The key, Johnson explained, was in realizing that Trump was harping on things from long ago in our past. “At some point I realized like, ‘Oh the stuff he’s talking about we got over hundreds of years ago, he’s.