According to ScreenRant, Andy Samberg’s (Palm Springs, Hot Rod, Hotel Transylvania) most recent animated project Digman! is a passion project for Samberg incorporating his eerily accurate impression of legendary action movie star Nicholas Cage (The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Ghost Rider, Con-Air). Though Samberg revealed he hopes to break away from doing impressions and wishes his low monotone voice acting is accredited to his new show instead of an old sketch/skit.
Samberg says, “We had talked about how it would be fun for me to be able to do a character that was sort of based on that so that I wasn’t spending my whole life doing an impression of another person, especially because he had come on SNL and done it with me. The thing that I did want to stay really aware of and make sure that we did was make this feel like its own thing, and expand that world, and bring in other characters, and not have it feel like we’re actually making it about him, because it’s not.”
Samberg initially broadcast his impression skills on Saturday Night Live over a decade ago where he would join Seth Meyers (Late Night with Seth Meyers, MacGruber, The Interview) or Micheal Che (Detroiters, Top Five, 70th Annual Emmys) & Colin Jost (Tom & Jerry, Coming 2 America, 70th Annual Emmys) on Weekend Update; a long-running sketch on SNL announcing what’s in the news and its ridiculousness. Samberg impersonated Nic Cage on several occasions often talking to other action movie stars such as Liam Nesson (Taken, Schindler’s List, Love Actually), Bradley Cooper (The Hangover, Avengers: Endgame, The A-Team), and of course the real Nicolas Cage.
Samberg’s obsession with Cage didn’t end on Saturday Night Live; Samberg’s leading character on comedy cop show Brooklyn Nine-Nine, NYPD Detective Jake Peralta, also had a seemingly compulsive addiction to all things Cage. Bringing us to the present day where Samberg’s Digman! is obviously an inspired spoof of Cage’s original film, National Treasure, where he journeys to take the Declaration of Independence.
Samberg’s inspiration to break away from impressions actually came from Cage after the “Get in the Cage” SNL sketch showcasing two Nicholas Cage’s as seen above. Samberg states, “When he came on SNL, he even said a thing which actually was very astute, which was that I’m not actually playing him. I’m actually playing a psychotic character that me and my friend Rob Klein came up with. That was almost a lightbulb moment of, like, Right, I want to keep playing that character; I don’t want to keep just doing an impression. There’s definitely some intermingling, just the way the voice sounds, obviously. But I also think even that starts to change and evolve as the series goes on.”
Digman! will premiere on March 22nd and is available on Comedy Central, following the shenanigans of world adventurer Rip Digman finding his own national treasures.