Saturday Night Live gave Nicki Minaj a new job on Halloween night, and it wasn’t one she applied for. In the show’s Oct. 31 cold open, cast member Saidah Belo-Osagie played the rapper as Trump’s next pick for White House press secretary.
The sharpest line came when Belo-Osagie’s Minaj burst into the sketch near its end. Trump’s out here killing it,” she declared, “and by it, I mean my career.” It aired just a week after Minaj joined the president on the campaign trail.
The parody pulled straight from Minaj’s appearance at Trump’s Oct. 25 rally in Port Huron, Michigan. She flew with him on Air Force One and backed Republican candidates Mike Rogers and John James ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections.
At that rally, Trump invited Minaj to stand before the crowd and commented on her appearance. SNL leaned into that moment, with James Austin Johnson’s Trump firing off a string of jokes on the same subject while praising her loyalty to his movement.
The press secretary bit didn’t come out of nowhere either. A Trump staffer floated Minaj for the role during the Air Force One trip, and Trump later told The Benny Show it was “a good idea,” adding, “I’m gonna think about that.”
Minaj, for her part, has shown no sign of backing off. After Trump called her his “favorite,” she said she is “not going anywhere.” She has not publicly addressed the sketch.
Getting to Minaj took some detours. The cold open started as a ride through a budget Halloween haunted attraction, with Grace Reiter and Jeremy Culhane as a couple on a date and Kenan Thompson guiding them as a Grim Reaper.
Then Tom Hanks showed up as David S. Pumpkins, the oddball character he first brought to the show in 2016.
Mikey Day and former cast member Bobby Moynihan returned as his dancing skeletons for what the sketch called the character’s third outing.
Johnson’s Trump froze the scene before it could get going. I’ll save you four minutes: he keeps popping up and confusing people on the ride.
The end,” he said, before comparing himself to Pumpkins: “We both appeared in 2016, we’re both very loud, very orange.”
He moved on to grumbling about Republican polling before Minaj made her entrance. In a crowded open, her cameo carried the most real world bite.
The joke about her career lands differently given her track record. In 2018 she became the first woman to log 100 entries on the Billboard Hot 100, and she holds the most Hot 100 top 10s among female rappers.
In 2020, she and Doja Cat became the first female rap duo to top the chart with the “Say So” remix.
Obsession star Inde Navarrette hosted the episode, her first time in the role. Gracie Abrams returned as musical guest for her second appearance, days after dropping her single “Here You Come, There You Go” and ahead of her Look at My Life arena tour, which kicks off Dec. 2 in Denver.
With the midterms days away and Trump still “thinking about” that press secretary idea, the sketch may not age the way SNL expects. For now, everyone is waiting to hear if Minaj found any of it funny.
