Kenan Thomspon had several defining roles on his way to becoming the longest-tenured Saturday Night Live cast member. Though the former child star of hit films like D2: The Mighty Ducks, and successful TV shows such as Kenan & Kel might now be best known for his work on the enduring sketch show, Thompson might be on the verge of adding to his list of popular parts as the star of his new sitcom, Kenan. Unfortunately, it sounds like there's one thing Thompson's real life wife "didn't love" about his upcoming comedy.
While preparing the masses for the premiere of Kenan (which debuts tonight on NBC at 8:30 EST), Thompson visited The Tonight Show and talked with Jimmy Fallon about the premise for his show. Kenan will follow his character, a single father, as he gets some help raising his two young daughters from his brother, Gary (Chris Redd), and father-in-law Rick (Don Johnson), while trying to juggle his parenting duties with his high profile job as the host of a local morning show.
As Thompson told Fallon, though, his wife wasn't too pleased with Kenan the character being single, mostly because that singledom comes from being widowed. When asked how his wife reacted when she found out he was playing a widowed dad on the show, Thompson responded:
She didn’t love it. She was like, 'Oh, so I'm dead?' But I mean she was just giving me a hard time But I was like, 'Yeah ... it's not you, you know what I mean? It's a show. It's a different thing.'
From what Kenan Thompson said to Jimmy Fallon, his wife (whom he married in 2011) was simply giving him a hard time when inquiring about the status of his character's romantic life, but I can imagine that this would be a bit odd for any spouse to hear, especially when you consider the similarities between Thompson and his character.
He did go on to say that a lot of Kenan is based on his real life, and you can see that just from a lot of the basic details of the series. On Kenan, the character lives in Atlanta, which is where IRL Kenan is from. As the host of that television morning show, the character also shares the fact that he has a very public career with Thompson, as well as them both being a dad to two girls.
Even though the two Kenans do share some solid commonalities, Thompson was sure to tell his wife that the show is still "a different thing" to help alleviate her desire to give her husband a hard time.
You can check out the new single-camera comedy, Kenan, when it premieres, tonight, Tuesday, February 16, at 8:30 p.m. on NBC, but for more to watch in the coming days and weeks, be sure to see what's available with our winter / spring 2021 premiere guide!
