Kenan Thompson may be Saturday Night Live’s longest-serving player, but there was at least one day where he really felt himself struggling to survive.
During an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers on Thursday, July 11, Thompson recounted a particularly harrowing hangover that he and a few of his fellow cast members were nursing while shooting a sketch as The Black Eyed Peas.
“We used to party pretty hard,” Meyers noted as he brought up a story that he said “always comes up” in their circle.
During one weeknight in 2005, Thompson and fellow SNLers Finesse Mitchell, Amy Poehler, and Will Forte were at a nightclub until 4:30 a.m. They were then picked up at 6 a.m. to shoot a pre-taped sketch.
“That was back when we used to shoot 90 miles upstate for some reason,” Thompson noted. “We used to do all our pre-tapes up there.”
The sketch in question is “1-800-555-PHUNK,” a commercial parody that closed out the October 8, 2005 episode hosted by Napoleon Dynamite star Jon Heder. (If you don’t remember that episode, it might be because musical guest Ashlee Simpson’s lip-syncing fiasco famously stole the show.)
Thompson, Poehler, Mitchell, and Heder portray the Black Eyed Peas in the commercial, promoting their availability for parties and corporate gigs. They’re depicted singing and dancing at a Pfizer party, a Wendy’s opening, and a bar mitzvah.
The three SNL actors struggled through their hangovers as they had to dance on the side of a highway.
“I was will.i.am, and I put on heavy dreadlocks,” Thompson recalled. “Heavy, hot dreadlocks.”
“Forte was planking, face-down, just laying on a bare carpet… trying to just be still and sleep that hangover [away].”
“I remember when it aired at dress,” Meyers added. “Everybody knew the full story. We were crying, watching all of you guys. You had to dance so hard.”
But Thompson and his colleagues relied on humor to make the most of their suffering. “It was very painful, so we started coming up with bits, like calling our former selves” he told Meyers.
“I called ‘Shoulda Kenan,’” Thompson continued. “Shoulda Kenan is at home in bed, and he gets a phone call from Crazy Kenan” asking for a ride home.
Thompson joined SNL in 2003 (though his career in sketch comedy began even earlier, on the Nickelodeon kids sketch comedy series All That). As Meyers points out, Thompson has been with the show for almost half of its 50-year run.
Meyers also poignantly described the joy of working at SNL during even bad days such as that one, quoting something Poehler once told him: “What we all loved about that time is, the saddest we were, we were always laughing.”
