Dana Carvey Hones Elon Musk Impression on ‘Real Time’: ‘I’m Working On It’

Dana Carvey previously admitted that he “can’t do Elon Musk very well,” but his impression of the billionaire businessman is already showing improvement.

Carvey once again took a crack at a Musk imitation during his sit-down with Bill Maher on the Real Time episode airing Friday, March 21. “I don’t really do it yet, but I’m working on it,” the comedian said.

“We got to go to Mars, because we can’t sustain life on planet Earth,” Carvey said, aping Musk’s mumbling tone. “We gotta go to Mars. It’s just gonna be really cool, OK? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.”

Then the Saturday Night Live alum segued into a Donald Trump impression: “What he said. What he said. What he said. He’s a smart cookie, he’s a tough cookie, he’s a Cookie Monster. This one, he’s smart. Everybody talks about it. He’s like Chips Ahoy. Excuse me. Excuse me. Everybody knows it, and nobody works a word like Trump. He’s a smart, tough cookie. He’s a Cookie Monster. He’s Lorna Doone.”

Jerod Harris/Getty Images for Netflix

Carvey imitated Musk in the cold open of a November 2024 episode of SNL, the NBC sketch show’s first episode following the presidential election. He later admitted on his and David Spade’s podcast that the impression wasn’t up to snuff.

“I can’t do Elon Musk very well, but I can do something that sounds not like anything,” he told Spade at the time. “And he has an incredible accent … South Africa via Canada via Pennsylvania. It’s almost like, it’s a little bit of Australian in there, a little bit of British, but he’s not totally that.”

On Friday’s Real Time, Carvey also did impressions of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — “He always sounds like he just took a hit of pot,” Carvey observed — as well as John F. Kennedy, Johnny Carson, and Joe Biden.

And the Wayne’s World actor razzed on Maher. “Anyway, Bill, how does someone anyone [in] show business have the same job since 1992 in different incarnations?” he asked. “Has it ever been done before?”

“Oh, shut up,” responded Maher, who previously hosted the political talk show Politically Incorrect on Comedy Central and ABC from 1993 to 2002. “You don’t care about that.”

Clapping, Carvey said, “I won a bet with my wife [that] he would tell me to shut up within two minutes.”

Real Time With Bill Maher, Fridays, 10/9c, HBO

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