Sean Spicer: Melissa McCarthy’s ‘SNL’ Spoof ‘Cost Me a Lot in Therapy’
After a tumultuous six months working for President Trump, former press secretary Sean Spicer joked to Jimmy Kimmel that Melissa McCarthy‘s Saturday Night Live impression “cost [him] a lot of money in therapy.” He also admitted, while laughing loudly, the spoof was “pretty funny.” Though Trump didn’t appreciate the humor.
When Kimmel asserted that Spicer’s roller-coaster White House experience had been “funny,” Spicer laughed cautiously. “For you. I’m not so sure I see it that way. But I appreciate the jokes.”
The comedian grilled Spicer about his first White House press briefing, one day following Trump’s inauguration, in which he proclaimed that the president’s crowd size at the event was the largest-ever. “There were a lot of us who wanted to be focused on his agenda, what he spoke about in his inaugural address [instead],” Spicer said. “I don’t think it was probably the best start.”
Kimmel also poked fun of his guest’s day-to-day White House life with a brief bit in which an actor playing Spicer watched unflattering news reports and bashed his head against a desk.
Spicer admitted that, during his Trump tenure, he set a phone alert for when the president tweeted, and that Trump “maybe once or twice” ran a tweet by him before sending it. He also clarified that his July resignation didn’t reflect any bad blood with and the press secretary’s short-lived pseudo-successor, former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci.
“I just didn’t feel as though he had the qualifications or the background to work in the communications office,” said Spicer. “And my view was that if I was going to have to partner with somebody I didn’t believe had the skill set to execute the job, it was incumbent on me to either step aside or make my voice known.”
Melissa McCarthy rode through streets as her ‘Saturday Night Live’ doppelgänger Sean Spicer ahead of a recent episode. Watch here.