For the my latest Variety cover story, this week's issue features my chat with "Saturday Night Live" star Kenan Thompson, who's finally hitting primetime with his new NBC comedy "Kenan." But he's not planning on leaving "SNL" just yet -- as he tells me, he'd like to at least make it to 20 seasons. (At 17 seasons, he already holds the record for longest-serving cast member ever.) I also talk to "SNL" executive producer Lorne Michaels, who considers Thompson his lucky charm, and isn't in a rush to see him go. (It helps that Michaels is also an EP on "Kenan.") Read the story here; an excerpt:
Kenan Thompson was working on the Warner Bros. lot one afternoon in the early 2000s when he spotted “Friends” star Matthew Perry zooming out of the studio gates in a BMW convertible.
“The sun was shining, he had his sunglasses on and he looked like he could not have been happier,” Thompson recalls. “It was like 2 o’clock in the afternoon. And he was done for the day. It just looked like the sweetest existence I’ve ever seen. That shit sticks out in my mind. Like, he was fucking beaming.”
Thompson, now 42, was no stranger to TV comedy at that point, having been a part of the late 1990s Nickelodeon ensemble sketch series “All That” and then joining with Kel Mitchell to topline the spinoff “Kenan & Kel.” But as those shows came to an end, the young Thompson’s ambitions only grew larger.
“Especially for anybody that’s been put into the comedy category, a sitcom is kind of like the Holy Grail,” he says. “It was always one of those achievements as far as like, will this ever happen?”
The answer is yes, it’s finally happening. After several attempts at developing his own half-hour network comedy, the “Saturday Night Live” star is ready for primetime. NBC’s “Kenan” is his first fully starring TV vehicle after years of being the seasoned utility player whom everyone else looked to for support — be it on “SNL” or the multitude of projects that have come out of his “SNL” colleagues.
“There’s nothing he can’t do,” says “SNL” supremo and “Kenan” executive producer Lorne Michaels. “He’s one of the greatest of all time. … Kenan may be a genius.”
“Kenan,” which debuts Feb. 16, stars Thompson as a local TV morning host in Atlanta and the widowed father of two young girls. But don’t consider this his “SNL” exit strategy — far from it.
Read the full story at Variety.
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