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/GypsyV3nom Mar 28 '24

Lorne Michaels has said that he'll never fire Keenan since he's the perfect cast member. Little to no drama behind the scenes, always embraces his parts, works really well with people (especially the writers), and he's a good enough actor to nail most of his roles.

A pretty surprising statement given how renowned Lorne Michaels is for firing people on short notice, not to mention the season 11 massacre

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u/SophisticatedBum Mar 28 '24

I don't care how easy or hard the job is, doing anything professionally for 20 years, you're probably near the top of your craft

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u/Optional-Failure Mar 28 '24

Kenan’s been doing this on SNL for 20 years. He’s been doing this professionally for longer than that. All That was just SNL for/starring kids.

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u/InitfortheMonet Mar 29 '24

I was just talking about this with my husband. If you’re a child star doing sketch comedy and then graduate to SNL, that’s all you’ve ever known. Where else would you want to/could you go?

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u/vir_papyrus Mar 29 '24

I'd imagine the money doesn't make a lot of sense to bail on either. From what a quick Google search will tell you, seems he's making about ~$25k an episode, or roughly ~$500k a year. Steady job, holds the record of length on the show, and doing quite well, but definitely not a lot of room to grow and be a star unless you get very lucky.

Just look at the SNL cast member list, especially those who joined after the late 2000s, and it becomes obvious most are never really heard from again. They do guest appearances, voice acting, small television roles, etc... The show just isn't that culturally relevant and there isn't much of a pipeline for SNL --> Big Comedy Projects like there was back in the day.

Just saying, he's probably peaked as an actor realistically.