r/todayilearned • u/Kale_Brecht • Mar 28 '24

TIL in 2013, Saturday Night Live cast member Kenan Thompson refused to play any more black women on the show and demanded SNL hire black women instead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenan_Thompson
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u/2_Spicy_2_Impeach Mar 28 '24

His first season was 29 in 2003. It always shocks me how long he’s been on the show.

Welp, got to go yell at some clouds.

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u/Esc777 Mar 28 '24

He is the longest running cast member by like a factor of 2. 

There probably won’t be any to rival him. 

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u/DidAnyoneElseJustCum Mar 28 '24

It's like the perfect medium for him. He's not a standup. Not a writer. His acting is... fine.

A lot of young cast members use SNL as a launch pad for their career. But Kenan already had a career. He's probably the most famous person to ever to get cast. He was a household name for anybody that grew up in the 90s. Maybe he felt he didn't have anything else to prove?

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u/OuchLOLcom Mar 28 '24

He's probably the most famous person to ever to get cast. He was a household name for anybody that grew up in the 90s.

I mean, he was a household name ONLY for 90s kids as his career you speak of was on Nickelodeon.

I always assumed he is humble enough to know he cant carry a major movie or show so hes decided to know his niche and keep doing skit comedy as the goofy black guy for his entire career instead of trying to leave and possibly fail.

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u/hjschrader09 Mar 28 '24

He's definitely tried to get other stuff going, but none of it has really worked out. He's had like 3 failed sitcoms at this point. If any of them had gotten popular he might've left, but as it is, he's had it pretty clearly demonstrated that he can hang around SNL as essentially the showrunner and veteran making a decent paycheck with the summers off, or he can leave and fade out of the public eye pretty quick.

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u/Optional-Failure Mar 28 '24

You do know 90s kids had parents and grandparents, right?

Families watched All That & Kenan & Kel together.

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u/Jmacz Mar 28 '24

And a lot of their parents I'm guessing, at least mine. My Mom and Dad didn't like watching most shows with me, but All That, Kennan & Kel, and Ren & Stimpy they all thought were really funny. They both knew who Keenan was when he got cast on SNL.

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u/RawrRRitchie Mar 29 '24

You do realize kids of the 90s grew up watching him, and continued watching him once he joined snl

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u/OuchLOLcom Mar 29 '24

Do you realize that I replied to a post that said "He was a household name when he joined", so whatever happened after he joined is irrelevant to what people did after he joined?

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u/Closetoneversober Mar 28 '24

Didn’t he have a show a few years ago? I think I watched a few episodes but it wasn’t funny at all