Evan Agostini/Invision/AP/file (right). Steve Bannon and Rosie O’Donnell
Talk about an invitation.
Last weekend, Melissa McCarthy played White House press secretary Sean Spicer on “Saturday Night Live,” and Politico reported that President Trump was particularly upset that it was a woman doing the ridiculing. “More than being lampooned as a press secretary who makes up facts,” according to the piece, “it was Spicer’s portrayal by a woman that was most problematic in the president’s eyes, according to sources close to him.”
One can only imagine the depth of the humiliation Trump would have felt if he’d lost the election to Hillary Clinton. Women particularly seem to get under his skin, not just McCarthy but Meryl Streep, Megyn Kelly, Alicia Machado, and others.
Now, amid social media chatter calling for more political drag on “SNL,” longtime Trump enemy Rosie O’Donnell is ready to push some gender buttons. “I am here to serve,” she tweeted. “I would need a few days to prepare — so if called — I will be ready.” She’s hinting she’d play chief strategist Steve Bannon on “SNL,” posting on Twitter a doctored photo that puts her face on Bannon’s head. Right now, the “SNL” Bannon is a man in a Grim Reaper costume.
Surely an O’Donnell Bannon would doubly — no, quadruply — sting Trump. He has spent a lot of time putting her down over the years, calling her, among many other things, “chubby,” “unattractive,” “a mentally sick woman, a bully, a dummy and, above all, a loser.” Is Lorne Michaels willing?
Vanity Fair also posted a number of amusing “SNL” casting suggestions designed specifically to annoy the president. Among them: Sasheer Zamata as Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Tina Fey as Donald Trump Jr., and Amy Poehler as Eric Trump.
The magazine also got Christine Baranski, out promoting her “Good Wife” spinoff “The Good Fight,” to offer her services. She said she might be willing to play new Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos: “It would seem somewhat logical — we have that strong jawline, don’t we?”
Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewGilbert.
