Source: Entertainment Weekly

Live from New York, it’s three Michael J. Foxes!

To celebrate the upcoming 40th anniversary of Back to the Future, the film that launched him to international stardom, Michael J. Fox sits down with Entertainment Weekly to discuss his inimitable career, including the time he hosted Saturday Night Live.

The Canadian screen star is all smiles when it comes to his turn hosting the March 16, 1991 episode of SNL. Fresh off the successes of two back-to-back Back to the Future sequels, Fox got the opportunity to introduce the Black Crowes, spar with the likes of Chris Farley, and earn massive laughs for playing then-Vice President Dan Quayle to Dana Carvey’s George H.W. Bush.

But it was another Carvey impression that still has him shocked, 34 years later.

“That was great. That was great. I didn’t think I had that much to imitate, so I was a little, I was fascinated with how they found something,” Fox says, recalling his memorable opening monologue, in which Carvey and David Spade joined him on stage, as him.

During the monologue, Fox flubbed a stinker of a joke about his latest film, the buddy cop comedy The Hard Way. When his eyes can’t get any more downcast from the audience’s cold shoulder, Spade and Kevin Nealon burst forth from a column of light and smoke backstage, dressed as Fox’s and Christopher Lloyd’s characters in Back to the Future.

“Who the hell are you?” the real Fox asks Spade’s Fox. “I’m you! I’m Michael J. Fox! I just came from 90 minutes in the future, the show’s a complete dud!” Spade exclaims, affecting his best Foxian voice crack. The three go back in time to stop the past version of Fox (played by Carvey) from taking on SNL hosting duties all, and eventually all end up in the office of real show boss Lorne Michaels, where Carvey is able to showcase some uncanny stylizations as Fox.

“I thought I was pretty milquetoast and generic,” Fox humbly recalls with a laugh. But assesses the sketch from today’s vantage point as “really good.”

He singles out one aspect of Carvey’s impression for particular acclaim, saying, “He got so into the physical thing, because I used to do a thing where I’d put my hands in my pockets, do a 360, and leap up on the counter. I never imagined that he’d do it but he got that, he totally nailed it. He really did. I love Dave a lot, but I really loved Dana’s impression.”

Entertainment Weekly has reached out to representatives for Carvey and Spade for comment.

Fox’s timing for heeding the SNL call couldn’t have been better. In the two years prior to his episode, the long-running sketch comedy series had hired a royal court of future comedy kings, including Chris Rock, Adam Sandler, Tim Meadows, Spade, and Farley.

In a sketch called “Not Gettin’ Any: Losers,” Spade, Rock, Sandler, and Farley are brought together for “an unrehearsed group discussion between panelists who haven’t slept with women in a long, long time.” Fox’s suave and confident moderator slowly exposes the nervous naïvete of the participants, with Farley in particular jostling around in discomfort.

Thinking back on the sketch, Fox reflects on the comedian who would die just six years later, “Chris was so great and so sweet and so guileless, and just a great guy. I loved him. He was a big puppy. He was so good, and just so funny.”

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