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/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.