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When we mused last week that this 2004 cover of Life was the closest we'd ever get to our dream of seeing Tina Fey playing Sarah Palin, we thought we were speaking practically. After all, Saturday Night Live already has at least two performers capable of the role (the Palin-resembling Casey Wilson and the Phelps-derobing Kristen Wiig), and Fey's hands are too tied as a full-time Baldwin wrangler for her to keep making cameo appearances at her old stomping grounds. Today, though, we stumbled on this Vulture interview with 24-year-old SNL scribe Simon Rich (son of NY Times political columnist Frank Rich), and while the writer is perfectly chatty about most matters, he clams up provocatively when asked about rumors that Fey might return to SNL for this Saturday's season premiere:

So in your roughly six months of work on SNL, have you written anything in hopes of seeing a particular guest host fill the role? Oh, yeah, definitely. Everybody always tries to write stuff that will showcase the host’s talents, whoever they are. The first sketch I ever wrote, which was cut, involved a man complaining about his memory foam mattress. He slept in it with his wife every night, and he couldn’t understand how every time he got home from work, there was a LeBron James–shaped indentation in his bed. That was definitely written with the host in mind. Tina Fey bears a striking resemblance to Sarah Palin. Are you planning to take advantage of that? [Silence.] She’s totally going to play the governor of Alaska, isn’t she? [Silence.] Okay.

Are Rich's silences a major hint, or just some savvy SNL promotion? And if it's the former, does that mean we can expect to see Fey triple-dipping on SNL, 30 Rock, and the upcoming Thursday night SNL installments? Between those gigs, her omnipresent AmEx commercials, and her upcoming movie with Steve Carell, girl's gonna need a lot of lip gloss. [Photo Credit: AP]