The F.B.I. director Kash Patel may or may not be a personnel problem for the White House. But he does present a challenge for “Saturday Night Live,” where there are no cast members of Indian descent to impersonate him.
So this weekend, “S.N.L.” dug deep into its celebrity Rolodex to recruit Aziz Ansari, the “Parks and Recreation” alumnus, to play the embattled Patel in its opening sketch.
This weekend’s broadcast, which featured Olivia Rodrigo as its host and musical guest, began with a parody of a White House news conference, introduced by Ashley Padilla as the press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Speaking over the sounds of nearby construction —“ Hold the work on the ballroom, please!” she shouted — Padilla said she would soon be taking a maternity leave.
“That’s when you tell President Trump about your maternity, and he says, ‘Leave,’” she explained.
She went on to bring out an administration colleague she called “the man, the myth, the liability”: the defense secretary Pete Hegseth, played by Colin Jost.
