In April 25’s Saturday Night Live opening sketch, Brad Pitt played an unusually candid Dr. Anthony Fauci, reacting to and translating several of President Donald Trump’s incorrect statements about the coronavirus pandemic.
Fauci is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and regularly appears on television alongside Trump during White House coronavirus briefings. In an appearance on CNN’s New Day in early April, Fauci jokingly said he’d like to have Pitt portray him on SNL — and Saturday, that came to pass.
In the cold open, Pitt’s Fauci sits at a desk in a study, sharing what he thinks Trump is really saying when he talks about the virus.
Pitt begins by saying he’d like to “thank all the older women in America who have sent me supportive, inspiring, and sometimes graphic emails.”
Then he starts to review Trump clips, beginning with one of a real-life Trump saying the vaccine for coronavirus will be coming out “relatively soon.” Pitt’s Fauci describes it as ... a bit misleading.
“Relative to the entire history of Earth? Sure, the vaccine is gonna come real fast,” Pitt says. “But if you were to tell a friend, ‘I’ll be over relatively soon,’ and then showed up a year and a half later, then your friend may be relatively pissed off.”
Another real Trump clip plays in which the president says: “We have done an incredible job ... It’s going to disappear one day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
Pitt’s Fauci is not convinced that this is a wise policy to bank on: “A miracle would be great. But miracles shouldn’t be Plan A. Even Sully tried to land at the airport first,” he says.
Pitt then reacts to a clip of Trump saying, “Anybody that needs a test gets a test ... and the tests are beautiful.”
“I don’t know if I would describe the test as beautiful, unless your idea of beauty is having a cotton swab tickle your brain,” Pitt says. “Also when he said everyone can get a test, what he meant was: almost no one.”
When a recent clip plays of Trump floating the idea of curing coronavirus by injecting disinfectant into the body, Pitt’s Fauci simply responds with a blank, slack-jawed face, before predicting that he’ll be fired because Trump promised that he wouldn’t fire him.
The sketch ends with Pitt taking off his wig — and breaking character, he sincerely thanks Fauci for his “calm” and “clarity” and thanks all medical professionals on the front lines of the pandemic response.
