Did Kenan Thompson’s self-referential SNL joke surprise you?
There isn’t too much tangible evidence of it at the moment, but there was a very interesting self-referential joke about it during the Celebrity Family Feud sketch. In the midst of his interactions with the host as Steven Harvey, Jordan Peele (played here by Chris Redd) told him about how staying on a sketch show for too long isn’t always great. Given that Kenan is the longest-tenured cast member in the history of SNL, he did really milk this moment for as long as he possibly could. That’s a big part of what makes him great — he knows how to take advantage of every little moment.
After fifteen seasons on the show, we do think that we probably will lose Kenan at some point in the next few years. After all, he’s already got the title of longest-tenured cast member and he, in turn, has accomplished pretty much everything that he could possibly want to as a cast member.
Personally, though, we’re at a point where we would want to see him stick around SNL forever given that he’s consistently funny and his characters are memorable. He’s basically comfort food for the soul week after week at this point. Yet, at the same time we’re a little worried that the joke tonight was almost a warning sign that he could be thinking about exiting at the end of the season and we could get a little bit more of a formal announcement down the road. Maybe it’s just a passing joke and we’re reading too much into it … or maybe this entire article is us manifesting some of our fears that we could be losing him soon.
Related – Read our full review of this weekend’s new episode
What do you think you would do if Kenan ever did leave SNL? Personally, we would cry. Share below!
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