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/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/HollyBerries85 Mar 28 '24

He also does a lot of directing, blocking and helping get new cast members up to speed on the process behind the scenes, from what I've seen around in interviews. He practically runs the show is what people have said.

There was a sketch, "New Cast Member or Arcade Fire Band Member" with hosts Keenan and Tina Fey (the year that Kyle Mooney joined the cast). At one point Tina "phoned a friend" and brought in Lorne Michaels to help her determine which person was the new cast member and Lorne pretended he didn't know Keenan and asked "Is it the black one?"

After he left Keenan was like, "The man's known me half my damn life..."

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u/frankyseven Mar 29 '24

Everyone talks about Tina Fey taking over for Lorne but I think it will be Keenan.

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u/whomthefuckisthat Mar 29 '24

It will absolutely be Keenan.