Posted in: NBC, TV | Tagged: Kenan Thompson, nbc, saturday night live, snl

SNL: Kenan Thompson Almost Quit Over "Rookie Mistakes" in Early Years

Kenan Thompson shares his early struggles and why he almost quit Saturday Night Live in an excerpt from his memoir "When I Was Your Age..."

It's hard to imagine how Saturday Night Live these days would be without Kenan Thompson, the variety series' current longest-running cast member since joining in 2003. Already a veteran of sketch comedy with his days on Nickelodeon's All That, there was a time when he felt the NBC weekly late-night variety series wasn't for him, as he revealed in his memoir When I Was Your Age: Life Lessons, Funny Stories & Questionable Parenting Advice from a Professional Clown. Things got considerably awkward for him in his early years; he told People that they were "marred by rookie mistakes" and his confidence "sunk to an all-time low" after bombing a sketch called "Randy the Bellhop" about the title character helping his patrons in all the wrong ways when it was cut from its respective episode that also featured Alec Baldwin and then-cast member Rachel Dratch.

Why Kenan Thompson's Long SNL Tenure Could Been One of the Shortest

"I was excited for the first opportunity to showcase my chops on the big stage," Thompson wrote in the book. "Thing was, I couldn't make it through dress rehearsal. I stuttered over this one line and couldn't ad-lib my way out of it." He explained how his experience at the time differed from his previous work. "If a slip-up like that happened at Nickelodeon or in the movies I'd done, we could just do another take," he continues. "At 'SNL' there was a lot riding on the live performance, obviously, and to no one's surprise, the sketch didn't make it to air."

Thompson claimed "Randy the Bellhop" writer T. Sean Shannon and "every other writer avoided me like COVID" and began thinking he'd never "get a character of my own." "I had no idea if I was doing a good job or not. When the season finished, I didn't even think I'd be asked back. I knew I needed to get better at writing my own characters and prayed I'd get another season to take a stab at it."

At Thompson's lowest point, "I was like, 'What the hell am I doing here?' I was famous enough that people were trying to follow me off the subway, but I couldn't get on the show," he writes, sharing that he took the cuts personally and often wondered "if there was space at SNL for my kind of comedy." For more, including what then-cast member Maya Rudolph told him, what it felt like saying the show's signature opening, "Live from New York…" for the first time, and series success, you can check out the interview here. You can also check out our interview with him here.

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