Kenan Thompson is ready for his close-up on ‘SNL’
TAMPA, Fla. — There’s a side to Kenan Thompson that few “Saturday Night Live” viewers get to see, when he takes its stage, shortly before each 11:30 p.m. broadcast, to warm up the studio audience with his exuberant cover of the Spencer Davis Group’s “Gimme Some Lovin’.”
“It’s helped me feel like a pivotal presence there,” said Thompson, who this May completed his record-breaking 15th season on “SNL” “If the warm-up is off, the first couple minutes of the cold open are going to be off. It’s an important tone-setter.”
The rock ‘n’ roll ritual is the rare moment when Thompson will cut loose and allow himself to be the center of attention. Far more often, he can be seen on the show in key supporting roles. There are the eccentric characters who visit the “Weekend Update” desk (like the self-aggrandizing basketball patriarch LaVar Ball and an eerily upbeat neighbor named Willie) or the characters who hold together ensemble pieces (like the host of the fictional game show “Black Jeopardy!” and Steve Harvey, the emcee of “Celebrity Family Feud”). Last month, his understated reliability helped earn him an Emmy Award nomination as a Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series, his first in that category.
Over a decade and a half on “SNL,” Thompson, 40, has grown to see himself as an integral part of this long-running entertainment franchise. But he had to get past his deeply ingrained modesty to achieve that recalibration.
“I feel like there’s less pressure and stress just hitting it and quitting it. Let me get in, get my laughs and then I’m out,” Thompson explained. “As far as being the guy, the star, the lead role of something, I didn’t necessarily need that.”
“Bring me in off the bench!” he added with a robust chuckle. “But to be a starter? To deal with the fact that, yeah, they need something from me every single week? I had to make that switch in my mind.”
On a July afternoon, a coolly confident Thompson was relaxing on an outdoor patio at a favorite restaurant here. He and his wife, Christina Evangeline, have been coming to Tampa in recent summers to enjoy the “SNL” offseason in relative tranquility, though this day they were awaiting the imminent birth of their second child. Earlier that morning, the couple’s daughter Georgia, had put her hand on Evangeline’s pregnant belly and uttered a single word: “Today.” (In fact, her baby sister, Gianna, would be born four days later.)
By his own admission, Thompson was not so calm and collected when he joined “SNL” in fall 2003, despite an already robust resume.
He had already starred in a sketch show, “All That,” and a sitcom, “Kenan & Kel,” both on Nickelodeon, that brought him to the attention of Lorne Michaels, the “SNL” creator and executive producer.
“He grew up in a television studio, and he grew up with this form,” Michaels said of Thompson. “He’s comfortable with it.”
But for Thompson, those first several years at “SNL” were fraught with anxiety and intimidation. Joining a troupe that then included Tina Fey, Jimmy Fallon and Amy Poehler was disorienting. “I was a huge fan, and then to see myself on it, it just didn’t seem like the same show,” he said. “It was so weird and confusing.”
He added, “It was way too much pressure, almost, and I’ve seen that give people nervous breakdowns.”
Though Thompson landed offbeat roles in various sketches, he said this was largely thanks to the generosity of his cast mates. “I was wandering around, just waiting to be called on,” he said. “‘Oh, you need a Carol Moseley Braun? I don’t have one, necessarily, but I’m willing to read these lines.’ That was my whole mentality.”
That philosophy, Thompson said, was likely shaped during his childhood in Atlanta, when he performed in the Freddie Hendricks Youth Ensemble (a theater company now known as Youth Ensemble of Atlanta) and was happy to be a second-stringer.
In a rare instance when he played a lead role, as Christopher Columbus in a student musical that traveled to Spain in 1992, Thompson said he felt out of place. Though he can still recall precise details about his European travels, he said: “I can barely remember my time on stage at all. I just checked out.”
His attitude changed following film roles in “The Mighty Ducks” sequels and his many years at Nickelodeon, after which he thought a slot at “SNL” would practically be handed to him on a plate. But the show did not seek him out until summer 2003, after the departure of longtime cast member Tracy Morgan.
Thompson was hired that year alongside Finesse Mitchell and J.B. Smoove (who both left the show in 2006). As Thompson said with a laugh, “Once Tracy left, they felt like it was black audition time, I guess.”
Little by little, Thompson made a name for himself. The recurring roles he cited as personal breakthroughs included a hardened prison inmate in a Scared Straight program and the host of a perplexing BET talk show called “What Up With That?”
But colleagues continued to take note of his reticence.
“He would say something like, ‘Oh, you should write that for somebody else, not me,’” Bryan Tucker, an “SNL” head writer who joined the show in 2005, recalled. “Or I would suggest an idea, and he would put himself in a smaller part, because he knew it would have a better chance of getting on if someone more popular was in a main part.”
It was only in recent years, after the departure of co-stars like Kristen Wiig and Andy Samberg (who both left in 2012), that Thompson felt he could relax and take a lesson from these performers.
“I just realized that they were being their awesome, silly selves,” he said, “and working the way that they worked best.”
Now that he has spent this long at “Saturday Night Live,” could Thompson, who surpassed Darrell Hammond (now the show’s announcer) last season, theoretically stay there indefinitely? Michaels put him in the same league as “SNL” alumni like Dana Carvey, Bill Hader and Wiig, who he said were perfectly suited for sketch comedy.
“There are people who are fully realized in this form,” Michaels said. “It uses all of their talent — their ability to create characters, be funny and be in the moment — and goes to all of their strengths, and those people should be there forever.”
More wistfully, Michaels said he gives the same advice to all his cast members: “Build a bridge to the next thing, and when it’s solid enough, walk across it.”
Thompson said that a day would inevitably come when he, too, would pack up his “SNL” office for the last time, though he has nothing specific in mind for his next act.
“I would love to just stay there forever and retire on it,” he said. But whether he remains for one, five or 10 more seasons, he added, “it’s going to happen. It’ll be a personal, grayhair moment: ‘That was that chapter of my life.’ You have to close it. I’m young, and I still want to do other things.”