"I did a thing recently," says Saturday Night Live performer Darrell Hammond, "when I did Tony Soprano, and, like, a flat [a piece of scenery] fell on my head as I was walking out. And I got out there, and I discovered I didn't know the dialogue - the first 30 seconds were brand new.
"And, that particular night," Hammond continues, "I had also swallowed some cleaning fluid. I had to go from Dan Rather to Tony Soprano in, like, three minutes, and they're using this cleaning fluid to take one wig off and put another wig on, take one nose off and put another nose on, and it dripped into my mouth, so I'd swallowed some of that.
"So I had cleaning fluid, and a flat fell on my head, and I'd never seen the dialogue before. That's ... " he says, taking only the slightest of pauses, " ... that's typical."
Yet it's important to understand that Hammond - who brings his stand-up comedy concert to Davenport's Adler Theatre on April 18 - isn't actually complaining here, as he follows this description of a "typical" night at the office by saying, "I think that's what makes us do what we do - it doesn't seem to be like anything else, or anywhere else, in the world."
Currently finishing up his record-setting 13th season as a Saturday Night Live cast member, Hammond is best-known for his spot-on celebrity impersonations. You'd be hard-pressed, though, to choose which ones he's best-known for, as a (very) short list of the actor's inspired comic creations includes Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Dick Cheney, Donald Trump, Chris Matthews, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Regis Philbin, and, in the much-loved Celebrity Jeopardy! sketches, a delightedly antagonistic Sean Connery. ("Your mother's a whore, Trebek.")
Hammond's aping is all the more impressive considering that he's generally required to perform a previously untested impersonation - or several previously untested impersonations - at the whim of SNL's writers, oftentimes with less than 48 hours' notice.
"But that's what we do," says the actor during our recent phone interview. "It's not like there's a choice. You can't say, 'I can't do it.' You gotta do it. You gotta make it happen.
"And I think with the pressure that's on at Saturday Night Live," he continues, "and the amount of things that you have to take care of, and the amount of preparation involved ... there's not ever as much time as you need. You're running against the clock, and the show goes on because it's 11:30 and not because you're ready. There's always that sort of pressure.
"You know, you try and try and try and try and try and try to prepare, you try to guess what's going to happen, and it never happens. The script is changing even as you're walking out on the floor, and the director's counting you down at 'Five, four, three, two ... ,' and even then you can have a writer out there going, 'Okay, now it's not gonna be camera one [you're facing], it's gonna be camera two. Until the third beat - that's gonna be camera three. But you're gonna have to cheat out, and you're gonna have to cheat out to camera one. And ... .'
"I mean, I haven't had that experience anywhere else," he marvels. "You're thinking all of these things, and oftentimes you haven't seen the words before, but, you know, you get a rush if you do a good job. It's a live crowd, there's no re-takes, there's no walking off the set for a little while to practice your lines ... . You're definitely on the high wire, and you do get that rush if you're able to pull that off."
The pressures may be different, but Hammond says that he gets a similar charge from stand-up comedy, which he began performing upon graduation from the University of Florida in the late 1970s, and which he still performs "20 to 25 weeks" of the 32 weeks he's not performing Saturday Night Live.
"Making people laugh is a rush," he says of the continued appeal of touring. "I think it's a head rush. You know, it's a group of people you've never met before, and you're gonna take material out there that you've written ... . It's always just amazing to me that I've written something that people that live in another state are gonna be able to laugh at. It still gives me a kick."
Like his weekly work on SNL, Hammond's stand-up set will find the actor performing a number of his famed impersonations in addition to newly scripted material. Unlike on SNL, his solo performances are designed as interactive ones. (Yes, he insists, you will be able to blurt out, "Do Al Gore!" during his Adler set.)
Hammond says, "I got my start in New York City, where it's just a style that audiences talk to the performer. There's the dialogue between the performer and the audience, and the performer shifts from dialogue into prepared material, and then back into dialogue ... . That's the way I've trained here in New York City, so that's what comes most naturally to me," even though he states that "I don't know that I've ever really been comfortable with it. I keep trying, and I have some successes, you know, and I try to leave it at that."
Another success unrelated to Saturday Night Live occurred last summer, when Hammond spent five weeks performing in the Tony-winning musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Portraying the nebbishy vice principal Douglas Panch, the role took advantage of both his comedic and improvisational skills - "There's probably five or 10 minutes of the show where you don't really know what's gonna happen," says Hammond of the production that requires roles to be played by audience volunteers - and marked the actor's Broadway debut.
"I don't know how I got that gig," Hammond says of the opportunity. "I'd done a couple of TV appearances - I did Law & Order, I did Vegas - and I think someone looked at that and said, 'You know, the guy's not gonna suck if he comes here. He could probably handle this dialogue, and we've seen him be funny without doing impressions, so we'll get him out here, and have him develop some sort of character, and then we'll see.'
"You know, it's Broadway," he says with a laugh. "They're not gonna let you stay out there too long if you're not getting the laughs. I mean, it's not the March of Dimes out there. It's a business."
It's a business that Hammond is interested in revisiting - "I'm hoping that occurs," he says of a return to the stage - although he does add that "right now, I feel like I have a really full life, and a full schedule, and that on some level, I really lucked out somewhere along the way."
As to whether Hammond will extend his Saturday Night Live record with a 14th season in the fall, the actor says that he and the show's producers have yet to make that decision. "We'll have a discussion over the summer," says Hammond. "First we'll have a discussion about a discussion, and then we'll have a discussion. That's something that we go through every year. Saturday Night Live is a place where anything can happen, and anything can not happen. ... You know, it's just too hard to predict."
Darrell Hammond performs at the Adler Theatre at 8 p.m. on Friday, April 18, and more information on the evening is available by visiting (http://www.adlertheatre.com).
