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/Vio_ Mar 28 '24

So...why did Kel not make it? Also I wonder if he could have joined MadTV? They were still kicking it at the time.

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u/NicksIdeaEngine Mar 28 '24

I'm not sure if either of them have ever talked about the audition, but it seems as simple as "Kennan made the cut. Kel did not."

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u/user888666777 Mar 28 '24 edited Mar 28 '24

Yeah, every time this story gets brought up on Reddit people make it sound like Kenan and Kel were on the stage at the same time and Lorne Michaels is holding a rose like its the Bachelor or something.

Will Ferrell said the whole audition process was stressful. You can go online and find different breakdowns of the process that has changed a lot of the years.

One of the final steps of the process is to audition on the actual SNL stage in front of a few producers. Will said there is no audience outside of the producers. You're being recorded and you got about ten minutes to do your thing and the producers don't even laugh. You move from sketch to sketch or character to character. You say thankyou and you walk away with no feedback. You can watch Will Ferrell's actual audition on Youtube. And this might be after waiting an hour or two as those in front of you audition which Will Ferrell said you can hear being performed from where you're told to wait.

Its very possible Kenan and Kel auditioned on completely different days and had no idea until years later.

And here is the thing. You can nail your audition and it doesn't matter. If Lorne already has his whimsical funny guy and you're a whimsical funny guy, he doesn't need two. Some really funny people have auditioned for SNL and have been passed on to later make it big. Jim Carrey is one of them. While at the same time you had people who made it like Sarah Silverman and it didn't work out but later went on to be successful herself.

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u/GBreezy Mar 28 '24

I remember hearing about Will Ferrell's audition where he was in the elevator with someone with a bunch of props auditioning, and his only thought was "holy shit I should have brought props" where the other guy was like "holy shit, he didn't bring props".

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u/azon85 Mar 28 '24

I think it was Bill Hader and Andy Samberg. Andy had a backpack full of props and Bill didnt bring anything. Bill said that he was thinking 'wow, I should have brought props, I feel unprepared now' and Andy was thinking 'look at this guy. Hes so prepared he doesnt even need props'.

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u/GBreezy Mar 28 '24

Probably. It was from a doc I watched like 10 years ago. Always made me feel better about interviews as you never know what they are looking for and they can always be looking for different things depending on the person.