Who Does Trump On ‘SNL’? James Austin Johnson Is ‘SNL’s New Breakout Star

Despite its largest-ever cast of reparatory and featured not-ready-for-primetime players this season, Saturday Night Live also can boast carving out the time and space for one of its rookies to become a breakout star.

And no, the headline wasn’t a spoiler.

Anyone paying any attention to SNL this season has noticed James Austin Johnson.

Heck, Johnson (or JAJ for short) even kicked off the season live in the premiere episode’s cold open, introducing us to SNL‘s latest, and perhaps greatest, take on President Joe Biden.

To emphasize how spot-on JAJ got Biden, they even let him outshine two of the show’s previous Bidens (Alex Moffat and Jason Sudeikis) in a follow-up cold open a few weeks later.

But back to that season premiere for just a moment.

As I mentioned in my recap for Decider: JAJ not only delivered when the show asked him to step up on his very first live show, but did so with aplomb, nailing not just Biden but also live impersonations of Larry the Cable Guy and Joe Buck.

He’s also been lauded for his take on Trump, which takes zero cues from Alec Baldwin’s dreadful strategy of “I’ll just repeat what Trump said/Tweeted in real life but only with 1000% more bluster” and instead focuses on taking Trump’s nonsensical stream of consciousness rants in real life and upping the ante. Witness below, as JAJ’s Trump steals thunder from … The Easter Bunny?!?

When has SNL asked a rookie to step up like that before? Perhaps only when the show has completely retooled its cast, so there weren’t any veterans of live network TV from within 30 Rockefeller Plaza to handle that responsibility. Certainly, we have to go back 35 years to find an SNL debut as auspicious as JAJ’s. That’s when Dana Carvey landed not one, but two of his classic recurring characters in his first show: The Church Lady, and Derek Stevens, who sang “Choppin’ Broccoli.”

Which Carvey did in his audition.

Wouldn’t you know it? In an Instagram Stories session for @nbcsnl recently, JAJ revealed that Carvey already had given him some advice on how to deal with his newfound fame.

Now let’s look at JAJ’s audition reel. In just more than six minutes, we see his impersonations of Trump, Biden, a sweet southern guy, a reality show chef, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, Louis C.K. as if he were “Ellen,” Jeffrey Tambor, a racist bone (as a Weeknd Update character), Robin Leach, Sam Elliott hosting Drag Race, Bobby Flay, Moose Hornsby, Marty Robbins, Anohni, Michael Rapaport, and a mashup of Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren on HBO’s Girls.

Larry the Cable Guy and Joe Buck weren’t on this.

But from that reel, we’ve already seen just how dramatically his vocal stylings level up thanks to hair, makeup, wardrobe and production design. We’ve seen his takes on Biden and Trump, of course, but also as Graham (taking over that role from past SNL MVP Kate McKinnon, who’s been absent this fall, presumably to film her Carole Baskin series for NBCUniversal’s Peacock platform). We’ve seen him do a straight Driver impersonation. And the show took JAJ’s CK/Ellen concept and ran with it, putting him on a pre-taped sketch called “Mellen.”

It’s not a stretch to imagine more of the characters from JAJ’s reel becoming real on SNL in the near future.

Can you imagine, though, if you were just living in Los Angeles and happening to catch JAJ earlier this year or last in a bar in Highland Park, where he co-hosted a weekly comedy showcase called “Rod Stewart Live”? Even more so if you’d actually gone there mistakenly thinking you’d be seeing the legendary singer, only to see relatively unknown comedians instead?

If that breaks your brain, then imagine what the fine folks of Nashville must think of JAJ. Some of them saw him performing as a teenager!

As JAJ told Vulture, as part of that mag’s profile of up-and-coming comedians: “I first tried my own comedy at like 14 or 15. I was doing conservative Christian firebrand Brad Stine’s comedy in monologue competitions during middle school, and when my dad had to fill time at a college event he was hosting, he asked me to do my monologue, and instead I put up my own stuff that I made up. And it worked! And then I bombed consistently for like three years before quitting.”

But you don’t have to imagine what JAJ looked and sounded like as a kid comedian. He shared it himself. Exhibit A: JAJ, circa Jan. 31, 2004, with his Chuck E. Cheese chunk.

In between then and now, of course, he’s been making slow and steady progress, even if most people hadn’t caught on.

His previous credits included bit parts on network (All Rise), cable (Better Call Saul, Adam Ruins Everything, Robbie), streaming (Future Man) and the big creen (Hail, Caesar!), and he’s the voice of Kyle on the second season of Tuca & Bertie.

Most people, though, only discovered JAJ through social media last summer when his front-facing walking, talking, stream-of-consciousness take on Trump led him into faraway rivers of thought such as Scooby-Doo and his mystery-solving friends.

How far JAJ has come already. Now we all get a chance to see how far he’ll go.