DETROIT — It all started when Tim Meadows sold his Tesla.
It’s not that the Highland Park native and former “Saturday Night Live” star had a problem with the vehicle. “I loved that car,” Meadows says. “It was not an easy decision to go, ‘OK, I’m going to get rid of the best car I’ve ever driven.’ ”
Rather, his move was based on Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his donations to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, and Meadows’ desire to get involved politically for the first time in his career.
“I just thought it’s wild that this guy can donate that much money, but when it comes down to it, he only has one vote, just like me. We’re equal in that way,” says the comedian. “So I can’t give $40 million or whatever it is, but I can give something, and I’m going to try to do more than just give my limited donor amount.”
So he sold the car and used the money from the sale to fund Saturday’s Comedy Caucus event at Pontiac’s Flagstar Strand Theatre for the Performing Arts. Meadows will emcee the show, a fundraiser for Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s Fight Like Hell PAC, with proceeds benefiting Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign.
The show will feature actor and musician Michael Shannon, indie rocker Jason Narducy and a team of nine female comedians, including Magen King, Tam White, Rachel Aflleje and Georgia Comstock.
Meadows, who had never been outwardly political before, says he felt the need to get involved during this particularly heated election cycle.
“For me, I just felt like it was time to do something, and I wanted to contribute,” says Meadows, on the phone earlier this week. After meeting Whitmer at a Q&A event this year he was inspired by her, he says, and wanted to support her any way he could.
Saturday’s event started coming together in late summer, and the female comics were assembled from acts Meadows has encountered while performing stand-up around the country. He’ll be meeting Shannon, the two-time Academy Award nominee and occasional punk rock musician, for the first time at the event.
As for his wheels these days? “Right now I’m driving my old beat-up Mercedes which both of my kids drove through high school,” Meadows says of his 2007 C230.
Meadows, 63, is a graduate of Detroit’s Pershing High School, and he spent his high school years playing in the woodwind section of the school’s band. It wasn’t until he caught a glimpse of himself playing the oboe where he felt he looked like “the biggest nerd ever” — his words — that he dropped music and focused on comedy, and he moved to Chicago and joined the Second City after attending Wayne State University. He received an honorary doctorate from Wayne State in 2022.
Meadows, who appeared on “SNL” for 10 seasons from 1991 to 2000, moved back to Detroit from Los Angeles during the COVID-19 pandemic. He still maintains a healthy stand-up schedule amid his acting career, and he appeared in this year’s “Mean Girls” remake, reprising his role as the school principal from the 2004 original.
He’s also set to appear in Lindsay Lohan’s next Netflix film, “Our Little Secret,” which is due out next month, and he’s starring in the second season of Max’s superhero series “Peacemaker.” Next month he’ll film “DMV,” an upcoming comedy pilot for CBS, in Montreal.
And he’s keeping his calendar clear for “SNL’s” 50th anniversary celebration, which is set for February in New York. The 40th anniversary party in 2015 was “the greatest thing of all time,” he says — he recalls meeting Derek Jeter, and then Rihanna, and then introducing Derek Jeter to Rihanna — so his expectations are high, but he’s ready to let loose.
Same thing goes for Saturday’s event, which while political in nature will focus on laughter, he says.
“The political rhetoric is so ugly right now,” Meadows says. “I was thinking it would be fun to have a political night where it’s just comedy.”
