Club Shay Shay
Shannon Sharpe invited veteran Saturday Night Live cast member and impressionist Jay Pharoah onto his Club Shay Shay podcast.
Jay Pharoah is a very skilled and successful impressionist. He’s been doing impressions ever since he was six years old and started parroting ‘Iago’, Gilbert Godfried’s parrot character in Aladdin.
His impressionist skill took him to SNL where he started mimicking 3-time Super Bowl champion Shannon Sharpe. It all came full circle and got awkward when Shannon asked Jay Pharoah ‘why the f–k you bother me?’ while wanting to know what led to the impressions of him on TV. The awkwardness quickly subsided and the two got along greatly in this interview:
Jay Pharoah told Shannon Sharpe ‘they wrote it’ and when he saw the character (Shannon) he knew he could do it. But he says he didn’t think the impression was very good in the beginning and believes he was ‘exaggerating for no reason’.
You be the judge:
Pharoah went on to explain that he ‘didn’t have anything funny to say’ so he was forced to exaggerate everything from the dialog to his mannerisms.
Shannon Sharpe then admits it wasn’t Jay Pharoah he didn’t like, it was the impersonations he wasn’t fond of. This came after Jay says he was always under the impression that Shannon was not a fan of the impersonations. Shannon did agree that Pharoah refined the impressions over time and it got better.
Here’s Jay Pharoah on Kimmel bouncing around between various impressions:
Their conversation about impressions is actually pretty good. Jay’s able to articulate his process well from start to finish with a new impression.
In the latter portion of the interview, Pharoah tells Shannon Sharpe that he’s a better impressionist than Jamie Foxx. This is an interesting take because the two have gone toe-to-toe in the past:
For anyone who wants to see Jamie Foxx compete against Jay Pharoah, here’s an 8-year-old video of them on Ellen