In 2016, one senior student had enough courage to stand in front of the entire student body at a Morning Exercise and do an impression of his own principal, Daniel Frank. The impression was spot on and the student body laughed and roared. That student was Matthew Friend, and his career of doing impressions and comedy was just beginning.

Friend has been doing impressions since he was 4 years old, starting from watching  Austin Powers and impersonating him. It was the first impression he did and it became a passion. He went on youtube and watched actors and old comedians like Johnny Carson and tried his best to change his voice to fit theirs. “I sort of became obsessed,” Friend said, “and over the years I’ve developed a repertoire of over 250 celebrity impressions.”

His obsession is with comedy and attempting to re-create voices of famous people. He began uploading videos of his impressions on his Youtube Channel, Matturday Night Live in 2013. “I started in high school putting things on the internet,” Friend said, “and I hope to have it grow.”

“His performances during talent shows were hilarious and made everyone laugh really hard,” senior Aaron Stone said. “I’ll always remember his Dr. Frank impersonation because it was so goofy.”

Not only was Friend performing at Parker, but when he was younger, he attended a summer camp called Camp Horseshoe, where he was remembered for some of the skits he performed. “I remember he did a skit parody of the Book of Mormon and he narrated the whole thing,” eight year camper Jack Fishman said. “He impersonated an old man and had a really funny imitation.”

Additionally, he has an Instagram account with 979 followers, @mattudaynightlive. Some of his most used impressions on the account are former President Barack Obama, Timothée Chalamet, the whole cast of Big Mouth, characters from Family Guy, and basically whoever he feels like impersonating.

This year he began interning at the Tonight Show, and it fits his interest of political satire. “Today is a perfect time to be doing political comedy,” Friend said. “One thing I do is impressions of impressions. Like I’ll look at famous people’s impressions and do impressions of their impressions.” An example of this is his impression of Alec Baldwin impersonating Donald Trump.

He does a lot of stand-up throughout New York and did some in Chicago when he was interning at Second City this past summer. “It’s my biggest passion in life,” Friend said. “I’m utilizing them [impressions] more and more. I was just in a late night show we just did at NYU… and I was a featured guest. I did 20 minutes of impressions like putting celebrities in weird situations.”

Stand-up and impersonation videos are not the only talents in theatre Friend has. He does plays at his University (NYU) and improv as well. He’s taking classes at Second City and Upright Citizens Brigade, which as he says, “is a Second City of New York”. He has already started his own comedy group with ideas similar to SNL, like a weekend update section.”I’m trying to mix all medium types of comedy into one performance group as oppose to groups that just do comedy or improv.”

He hopes to go far with this SNL comedy group and make a name for himself.  “This is definitely what I want to do in my life,” Friend said. “The goal is a Saturday Night Live type of thing.”