SNL returns with mortifying Natalie Harp skit as they mock aide’s friendship with Trump: ‘This is so unsettling’

Saturday Night Live returned with a sketch mocking President Donald Trump‘s close friendship with his devoted aide Natalie Harp. 

As the comedy late-night show began its 52nd season on Saturday night, writers wasted no time and began by likening the Trump aide’s relationship to the president to the recent hit horror movie Obsession. 

The cold open sketch saw James Austin Johnson’s well-known portrayal of Trump alongside Ramy Youssef as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani – before the pair were interrupted by newcomer Ashley Padilla as 35-year-old Harp. 

‘Hi Mr President. Hi,’ a giddy Harp said as she entered the room looking disheveled from rain.

‘Natalie, I didn’t realise you were in New York,’ Trump said. 

‘Oh, I wasn’t. I ran from DC Weapons-style,’ Harp responded, holding out her arms straight behind her – as seen in the horror movie Weapons – before coming in closer to Trump. 

‘I uh- came in case you needed anything because um, “Baby boy you’ve been on my mind,”‘ Harp sang. 

An amused Trump turned to Mamdani and said: ‘Isn’t she great. She’s like the girl from Obsession but blonde.’

At that, Harp giggled multiple times while mimicking the movie’s iconic frown by the possessed leading lady Nikki portrayed by Inde Navarrette.

‘I’m kidding, I’m totally normal. I totally am normal,’ Harp laughed. ‘Anyways, nice to meet you Mayor Mamdani.’

Harp then shook the mayor’s hand before inching closer and whispering in his ear, ‘If you hurt him, I will end you.’ 

The scene closed with Mamdani offering to follow Trump back on Instagram in exchange for the president to stay with the mayor – poking fun at Trump being seemingly enamored with the NYC Democrat. 

‘Only if you give us $21 billion for a housing project in Queens,’ Mamdani initially asked. 

On Trump’s rejection of the offer, Mamdani said: ‘What if I follow you back on Instagram?’

‘It’s a done deal,’ Trump responded. 

The presidential aide has faced waves of scrutiny and mockery for her incredibly devoted attitude toward Trump – whom she also credited with saving her life. 

The SNL sketch garnered mixed reactions on social media, with some applauding Padilla’s welcome to the show while others were less-impressed.

‘SNL turned Trump and Natalie Harp’s relationship into a full-blown horror movie,’ one user wrote. 

‘Ashley Padilla made her debut as Harp in the Season 52 premiere, portraying Trump’s assistant as fiercely protective and hilariously obsessed with him. At one point, she warns Mamdani: “If you hurt him, I will end you,”‘ they continued. 

‘My take: SNL really said, “What if we turned this into Fatal Attraction?” Ashley Padilla understood the assignment because the whole thing was SO unsettling and ridiculous at the same time. That entrance alone was enough to make the cold open memorable.’

Another user said: ‘Padilla was so good as Natalie that Trump probably can’t decide whether to demand SNL be canceled or to try to hire Ashley too.’

A third, however, criticised the show’s return and wrote: ‘I’m usually an SNL defender and find his Trump skits very funny but this cold open was rough.’

‘Somehow SNL couldn’t figure out a way to ridicule the fattest target of the year – the Massachusetts lesbian COVID bar – instead, choosing to open with another boring, insipid Trump bit. C’mon, guys,’ another comment read.  

Harp has remained glued to Trump’s side to the point that it raised concerns within the Secret Service and the President’s inner circle.

During his May 2023 golf trip to Scotland, Harp ran behind the President’s golf cart because no other ones were available.

She later wrote him a letter to apologize for embarrassing him while trying to keep up.

‘I also am sorry if I was an embarrassment walking the course in Scotland,’ she wrote in a letter to Trump published by the Daily Mail in February last year. 

The aide also told the president in one of many personal letters from 2023: ‘You are all that matters to me.’

She also called him her ‘Guardian and Protector in this Life,’ according to letters reviewed by the New York Times.

Harp went on to admit that she starved herself and forgot to sleep while working for Trump, saying: ‘I want things to always be right between us. I also know I’ve been distracted all week (forgetting to eat throughout the days, and even forgetting to sleep, and only catching a couple hours at a time).’ 

Her letter concludes: ‘With all my heart, Natalie.’  

Trump told people that same year that Harp was the only person on his team who cared about him: ‘All of you will go off and make money … she’ll never leave me.’

It was revealed on Wednesday that Harp was gifted $45,000, along with two other female aides.

Harp’s determination to remain by Trump’s side was also on display in October 2023, when she rode in the trunk of an SUV after being told there was no room for her in the motorcade taking him to a New York court appearance. 

After staffers told her there was no room in the vehicle, Harp became livid and began screaming at them, insisting that Trump had personally asked her to accompany him, according to CNN. 

The incident was one example of how Harp had ‘irked’ those closest to the president.

One advisor said that Trump ‘likes the attention and the fact that she is 100 percent committed and loyal’.

‘She doesn’t question, doesn’t second guess,’ the source said.

Harp also spent the summer of 2023 sleeping in the women’s locker room at Trump’s Bedminster golf club so she could remain close to him, according to journalist Michael Wolff.

She had initially secured a maid’s room but moved into the locker room because it was closer to the main house and allowed her to respond more quickly whenever Trump called.

During the campaign, Melania Trump once stumbled upon Harp late at night inside Trump’s private quarters at Mar-a-Lago, an area typically off-limits to anyone outside the family, according to journalist Alex Isenstadt.

Harp was reportedly delivering documents to Trump that she did not want to wait until morning to hand over.

Trump’s relationship with Harp is back in the limelight after he chose to save her over his own cabinet secretaries after an Iranian assassination threat following the Nato summit in Turkey last month.

Harp was among a handful of aides including Trump’s former caddy Dan Scavino who switched planes with him on the tarmac in Ankara. Israeli intelligence had warned of an impending Iranian attack on Air Force One.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent were left on the plane with dozens of journalists.

Harp’s estranged brother, Preston, first spoke to the Daily Mail back in June where he described his sister’s relationship with Trump as ‘very unhealthy’ and called the President a ‘national embarrassment.’

Preston, a self-described communist who lives in Nicaragua, recently told CNN that when Harp was a teenager she also wrote letters to president George Bush during the height of the Iraq war. 

The Daily Mail reached out to the White House for comment.