Keith Morrison Got Real About Bill Hader’s SNL Impression — and They Adorably Met IRL
The true crime journalist and the comedian debated whether "that pesky DNA!" was a direct quote.
Keith Morrison had a mixed reaction to his portrayal on Saturday Night Live — but he and his impersonator are definitely mutual fans of each other.
The Dateline host was celebrating 30 seasons of the NBC true crime show when he stopped by Late Night With Seth Meyers in 2021. Seth Meyers asked the golden voiced Morrison how he felt about Bill Hader's impression of him, and Morrison wasn't entirely positive about it.
"You didn't like it?" Meyers asked.
"I did and I didn't," Morrison admitted. "Have you ever had somebody do an impression of you? So if the first time you ever saw it, you were unprepared for it, and it was on national television — on Saturday Night Live — and you turn on the TV and somebody's doing that... My daughter texted me. She was laughing her head off."
"So I think that's a good sign, if your daughter laughs her head off," Meyers pointed out.
"It does a wonderful thing, actually, for a person's sense of him or himself," Morrison continued. "It's an amazing thing. It makes you feel good. But at the same time you realize even when you feel good, even when you feel noticed and appreciated, you're an idiot. You always were an idiot."
But, as Morrison's meeting with Hader revealed two years prior, the comedian wouldn't agree. He's actually a Dateline superfan.
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Bill Hader met Keith Morrison, his "favorite person"
In sketches like "Dateline: The Mystery of the Chopped Up Guy," Hader's exaggerated spin on Morrison was a guy who relished hearing the dark and gory details of crimes, getting a kick out of people describing exactly how they committed gruesome murders or discovered their loved ones were dead.
In 2019, Sunday TODAY Host Willie Geist brought Hader to the Dateline floor in Rockefeller Plaza, and took him to an editing bay where Hader actually recounted episodes he was familiar with as a viewer. When Morrison rolled up to surprise Hader, the comedian yelled "I KNEW IT! I knew he was gonna be here!"
The SNL alum was starstruck, nearly unable to form complete sentences.
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“John Mulaney, Larry David — there’s so many of us. We’re like massive fans of yours and we’ll always be like ‘you see what Keith Morrison’…" Hader said, grinning and trailing off. As he tried to recall the first time he did a Dateline sketch at SNL, he could barely even look at Morrison.
"I'm so nervous right now," Hader admitted.
Watch the video of Hader and Morrison's meeting below.
Hader later got a sneak peek at an upcoming episode, and it's like watching a kid in a candy store who knows everything about every single kind of candy. When Morrison offered to let Hader film a promo with him, he was stunned.
"Yeah, I'll do a promo," he said. "I was gonna see if you wanted to take a picture with me, but yeah, let's do a promo."
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