The ‘Saturday Night Live’ legend shares the secrets of his iconic characters.

Dana Carvey picks his favorite SNL sketch — and reveals how he learned the Lorne Michaels voice

The 'Saturday Night Live' legend shares the secrets of his iconic characters.

By Derek Lawrence

Derek Lawrence

Derek Lawrence is a former associate editor at **. He left EW in 2022.

EW's editorial guidelines

March 25, 2026 7:15 p.m. ET

Leave a Comment

Dana Carvey on 'The Rundown' for 'SNL'. Credit:

Saturday Night Live/YouTube

From the basement to the top of Dana Carvey's favorite *Saturday Night Live* sketch rankings!

The *SNL* legend returned to Studio 8H for the latest edition of *SNL*'s new short-form series *The Rundown*, and he named 1990's "Wayne's World," with special guest Aerosmith, as his personal pick for the No. 1 live sketch.

"They are party on," he said of Garth and Wayne, the iconic characters played by him and Mike Myers. "They are just joy, fun. To me, the secret sauce was the so-called two losers in town, they live with their parents, they have no money, they have an AMC Pacer, and they're by far the happiest people in the town."

Carvey added, "You always want to get in a really big, funny sketch with your friends, where everything just flows and is landing."

Created by Myers and developed alongside Carvey, the duo debuted Wayne and Garth on *SNL* in 1990. The two rock-obsessed public access show hosts became so popular that they were given their own hit movie, 1992's *Wayne's World*, followed by a 1993 sequel.

"Just like any great comedy team, they are always trying to one-up each other," *Wayne's World* film director Penelope Spheeris previously told EW. "So Dana would come up with an idea and then Mike would build on it and it just kept evolving. I had to respect the fact that they really knew the characters."

"Mike Myers is *Wayne's World*," Carvey declared on *The Rundown*. "He built the house. He let me rent a room.... When you do it the first time, you just hope it works. He didn't have a lot of lines, but Mike told me that Garth worshiped Wayne. So I started really enjoying [Wayne's] little jokes."

Standing in front of the *SNL* rundown board also brought back memories for Carvey of how he began to master his famous impersonation of *SNL *creator Lorne Michaels.

"The way I learned to do Lorne would be, after the read through on Wednesday, and we'd have a ton of sketches we just read, 50 of them," he recalled. "And then Lorne would try to put them on the rundown for the show. Very frustrated, he said, [*Lorne Michaels voice*] 'Um... I still have no f---ing first act.'"

Original Article on Source

Source: “EW SNL”