When the late night TV institution known as Saturday Night Live returns this fall, cast member Kenan Thompson will be entering his 16th season on the sketch comedy series. In that time, you can bet that Thompson has probably seen some wild and crazy things from other cast members as well as guests to the show. Well, in 2015, when Donald Trump hosted, he didn't do himself any favors with regards to Thompson, and the actor recently revealed just what happened to make him so unhappy when Trump took on hosting duties that season and attended the table read for his episode:
He's a business guy, so if his phone rings, he's like, 'Hello, business.' That sketch died in that moment. That's so unfair for the writer, who might've been up all night trying to type that shit. To not recognize the effort that goes into it is pretty shitty.
Apparently, as Kenan Thompson tells Rolling Stone, during the table read for Donald Trump's episode of Saturday Night Live in 2015, the soon-to-be American President decided it was a good idea to take a phone call. In case you aren't aware, a table read is where the entire cast of a production gets together to read over the entire script to work out basic kinks, and see how everything plays. On a show like SNL, this is especially important to see if jokes land the way they were intended. While I can imagine that interruptions are not entirely unheard of, the main reason that Trump stopping to answer the phone bothered Thompson so much is that he actually stopped in the middle of a sketch they were reading to do so. Thompson doesn't specify whether or not Trump was in the sketch he interrupted or if he even apologized for getting rehearsals off track, but it's not hard to understand why this would be a sticking point, either way.
The writers at Saturday Night Live work really hard to come up with fresh ideas every week, and some of these rely on the backgrounds and talents of the guest hosts who come in on a weekly basis. As such, it's sure to be a difficult task that's challenging beyond what most people could handle. Not to mention the fact that they're expected to keep tweaking things as rehearsals reveal what does or doesn't quite work, and sometimes this process goes on until right before the cameras begin to roll on the live broadcast, which is one reason why they need cue cards on hand as they film. The table reads are a very important aspect of this process, and, for Kenan Thompson, the idea of being bold enough to dismiss this part of preparing for the show (and the work that went into getting a sketch this far along) was "pretty shitty."
Well, at least Kenan Thompson can likely rest assured that no such things will happen anytime soon, as Donald Trump will be busy running the country for a bit. You can catch Thompson's 16th season as a Saturday Night Live cast member when the show returns to NBC for Season 44 on September 29, and joins a lot of other new and returning shows this fall.
