‘The Rock Obama’ ‘SNL’ Cold Open Video Gets 65,000 Views In 12 Hours [Video]


The opening video snippet of Saturday Night Live is getting plenty of attention on Sunday, after the video titled “The Rock Obama Cold Open — SNL” was was published on March 29 to YouTube. Within 12 hours of the video being uploaded, the number of views had swelled to nearly 65,000 — with other copies of the same SNL opening receiving approximately 30,000 additional views on YouTube.

As stated in the video’s description on the SNL YouTube page, it was a bunch of political melee and criticism from President Obama’s opponents that sent him into a rage, transforming his character. The skit was reminiscent of Key & Peele’s “Obama anger translator” Luther — a popular Comedy Central sketch seen in videos titled “Key & Peele — Loses His S**t” that purport to show the undiplomatic things that the president would like to say to his critics, instead of remaining poised and civil.

“After the actions of Rep. John Boehner (Taran Killam), Sen. Ted Cruz (Bobby Moynihan) and Sen. Tom Cotton (Kyle Mooney) make him lose his cool, President Obama (Jay Pharoah) turns into The Rock Obama (Dwayne Johnson).”

The Saturday Night Live version of Obama’s angry alter ego merely showed him relying mostly on physical strength to express his rage, which makes sense — because when you get a muscular man like Johnson in the mix, viewers halfway expect John Boehner to be thrown through a window on SNL, as reported by Time? — although Dwayne’s charisma is on full display, as well.

First Lady Michelle Obama isn’t immune to angry transformations, either, and the SNL opening shows that “She Rock Obama” can emerge, splitting the back of Michelle’s dress and slicing open her shoes to reveal SNL regular Leslie Jones as the angrier, more outspoken version of the FLOTUS. Jones played the brash version of Michelle that came to life after Sasheer Zamata’s tamer version of Michelle got mad when she heard her vegetable garden had been tampered with.

As reported by the Inquisitr, the March 28 Saturday Night Live episode paid tribute to Paul Walker prior to the release of the seventh installment of the Fast & Furious movie franchise, dubbed Furious 7, which also stars Vin Diesel and Johnson.

Although gaining a lot of attention, the newest SNL skit isn’t the first time The Rock Obama has made an appearance, reports Vanity Fair? — the publication notes the times in previous years that Johnson has appeared as the character on the late night show.

[Image via SNL]

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