Saturday Night Live In the summer of 1980, Piscopo was hired as a contract player for
Saturday Night Live. The show had gone through a major upheaval when all the writers, major producers, and cast members left that spring. The new cast bombed with critics and fans with the exception of Piscopo and
Eddie Murphy. As a result, they were the only two cast members to be kept when
Dick Ebersol took over the show the next spring. With the success of
SNL, Piscopo moved to the quiet upscale borough of
Alpine, New Jersey. Piscopo later reprised his role as Sinatra in a series of stop-motion animated ads for
Lipton Brisk Iced Tea. He had an occasional spot on the
Weekend Update segment as a bombastic sports commentator who would pose a series of questions and usually follow them up with a loud, "Who cares?" Piscopo and
Robin Duke also played
The Whiners.
Post-Saturday Night Live career Piscopo left
Saturday Night Live at the end of the 1983–1984 season. In 1984, he starred with
Michael Keaton in the movie
Johnny Dangerously, which received mixed reviews. He also starred in an
HBO special and wrote a book for
Pocket Books titled
The Piscopo Tapes. An album,
New Jersey, for
Columbia Records, followed in 1985 and an
ABC special titled
The Joe Piscopo New Jersey Special in May 1986. In 1987, Piscopo was mentioned in the
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers single "
Jammin' Me". In the mid-to-late 1980s, Piscopo developed an interest in
bodybuilding. While doing impressions of
Bruce Springsteen on
SNL, he first became involved with it. He appeared on the cover of
Muscle & Fitness magazine in April 1988 and again in June 1990. In the 1990 issue he said, "Some people in
Hollywood think I'm nuts with this bodybuilding stuff. They'll say, 'You're getting too big. You'll hurt your career.' But they don't understand that high that comes from a workout, the challenge, and the personal victory." Since January 2014, Piscopo has hosted
Piscopo in the Morning, a radio show from 6:00 am to 10:00am weekdays on
970AM The Answer in
Hackensack, New Jersey. From the inception of his radio program until June 2020, the show was produced by
Frank Morano, who also served as an on-air contributor. Beginning on December 13, 2020, Piscopo began to host the Ramsey Mazda Sunday Nights with Sinatra on
770 AM WABC in
New York City and WABC's sister station
107.1 FM WLIR in
Hampton Bays, New York. Piscopo considered running as an independent for
governor of New Jersey in 2017 based in part on the political success of
Donald Trump, for whom he campaigned in 2016. He was encouraged by a number of political figures, including former New York City mayor
Rudy Giuliani. However, in May 2017, he decided not to run. He has been active in a band and performed stand up and music at a political rally hosted by businessman
Mike Lindell in May 2021. ==Personal life==