Saturday Night Live legend Tina Fey made a surprise return to Studio 8H in the latest episode of the long-running sketch series.
Turning up alongside her longtime comedy partner Amy Poehler, who was playing Attorney General Pam Bondi, Fey took on the role of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
“That’s right, it’s me. Kristi Noem. I spell my name with an ‘I’ because that’s how I thought it was spelled,” Fey said, entering the scene with a large automatic weapon. “Hold my gun.”
Fey joked that she is the “rarest type of person in Washington D.C.,” as “a brunette that Donald Trump listens to.”
She also tore into ICE’s hiring push, joking that ICE agents are army or police rejects, take gas station supplements, and can’t be trusted with keys.
“I’m here to tell you that this Democrat government shutdown needs to end now,” Fey’s Noem said, before being told that the Democrats are even more eager than the Republicans to end the ongoing government shutdown.
“Ha, that makes me laugh more than the end of Old Yeller‚” Fey’s Noem replied. Noem is infamous for recounting an incident in which she shot her family dog, Cricket, in a gravel pit.
“It was not a pleasant job,” Noem wrote in her memoir No Going Back. “But it had to be done.”
“Dogs don’t just get shot,” Fey said. “Heroes shoot them.”
Poehler and Fey have worked together for more than 30 years, since first meeting while doing improv at Chicago’s Second City in the 1990s. They worked together on SNL from 2001 until 2006, and co-anchored Weekend Update from 2004 to 2006.
Saturday’s episode was the first time that Fey has appeared on a regular SNL episode in almost a year.
Fey and Poehler appeared later in the episode alongside former cast member Seth Meyers for a Weekend Update Joke Off.
“My first wife and my second wife everybody,” Poehler said of her former colleagues—and co-anchors.
Fey, a 10-time Emmy winner, has an extensive history with SNL. She started with the show in 1997, and Fey was the first woman to be named head writer in 1999, overseeing a period of popular revival. Her impression of Alaska Republican Sarah Palin is one of her most memorable and enduring creations.
Fey left Saturday Night Live in 2006 to create 30 Rock, a sitcom loosely based on her time working on the show. Since her departure, she has come back to host the show six times—including once with Poehler—and made more than two dozen cameos.
