Live from New York, it’s a presidential candidate scrounging for every vote in the final days before the election.

Vice President Kamala Harris made a surprise trip to New York City on Saturday to appear on Saturday Night Live, briefly stepping away from the battleground states where she’s been furiously campaigning in favour of the iconic sketch comedy show.

Harris departed on Air Force Two after an early evening campaign stop on in Charlotte, North Carolina. She was scheduled to head to Detroit, but once in the air, aides said she’d be making an unscheduled stop and the plane landed at LaGuardia Airport in Queens.

Harris arrived at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan, where SNL is recorded, shortly after 8pm, enough time for a quick rehearsal before the show airs live at 11.30pm. It is the final SNL episode before election day on Tuesday.

Neither the White House nor her campaign have confirmed her appearance on the show, but it was confirmed by three people familiar with Harris’ plans who were not authorised to speak publicly about them.

Actor Maya Rudolph first played Harris on the show in 2019 and has reprised her role this season, doing a spot-on impression of the vice president, including calling herself “Momala”.

Rudolph opened the show’s season premiere with the line: “Well, well, well. Look who fell out of that coconut tree.” And she’s joked about keeping President Joe Biden in his place.

Harris’ husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, has been played by former cast member Andy Samberg and Biden is played by Dana Carvey, who also famously played then-president George H.W. Bush in the early 1990s.

Rudolph’s performance has won critical and comedic acclaim, including from Harris herself.

“Maya Rudolph – I mean, she’s so good,” Harris said last month on ABC’s The View. “She had the whole thing, the suit, the jewellery, everything!”

Harris added that she was impressed with Rudolph’s “mannerisms”.

Jason Miller, a senior adviser to former president and Republican nominee Donald Trump, expressed surprise that Harris would appear on SNL given what he characterised as her unflattering portrayal on the show. Asked if Trump had been invited to appear, he said: “I don’t know. Probably not.”

Politicians nonetheless have a long history on SNL, including Trump, who hosted the show in 2015 – though appearing so close to election day is unusual.

Hillary Clinton was running in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary when she appeared next to Amy Poehler, who played her on the show and was known for launching into a trademark, exaggerated cackle. The real Clinton wondered during her appearance, “Do I really laugh like that?”

Clinton returned in 2016, while running against Trump in a race she ultimately lost.

The first sitting president to appear on SNL was Republican Gerald Ford, who did so less than a year after the show made its debut. Ford appeared in April 1976 on an episode hosted by his press secretary, Ron Nessen, and declared the show’s famous opening rejoinder, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night.”

Then-Illinois senator Barack Obama appeared alongside Poehler impersonating Clinton in 2007, and Republican Bob Dole was on the show in November 1996 – a mere 11 days after losing that year’s election to Bill Clinton. Dole consoled Norm Macdonald, who played the Kansas senator.

Then there was Tina Fey’s 2008 impression of vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin – and in particular her joke that “I can see Russia from my house.” It was so good that Fey eventually won an Emmy and Palin herself appeared on the show that October, in the weeks before the election.

AP