While we wait for SNL to return to the 2024 TV schedule, Kenan Thompson has been everywhere lately thanks to Olympics coverage. While my favorite moment so far has probably involved him roasting co-star Colin Jost, he also popped up on Late Night with Seth Meyers recently to talk about his recent gigs. Clearly the late night host doesn’t have the millennial fondness for the actor that I have, because he thought Mr. Thompson’s skating skills were a bit quacky at first.
Meyers recalled recently that he and the Saturday Night Live cast would go do that iconic thing where they would ice skate at Rockefeller Center every year around the holidays. Thompson is an A+ skater, and Meyers said he never, ever saw it coming.
Turns out, that’s because he didn’t grow up watching Thompson in The Mighty Ducks’ excellent follow-up Mighty Ducks 2. I’m not sure how Seth Meyers could have missed such an icon of Disney live-action excellence, but here’s Seth’s side of the story:
The thing is, I’m always like, ‘Kenan you look so young and yet the same.’ We’ve talked about this on the show before, but every now and again on the Christmas Show at SNL we would go down and we would skate at 30 Rock. And I remember we went down one year and I was like, ‘Oh Kenan’s the best skater by far.’ And I’m like, ‘Where’d you learn to skate?’ You were like, ‘Oh, Mighty Ducks.’ I’m like, ‘Oh of course.’
Kenan Thompson admitted that Mighty Ducks 2 was actually his very first film, and that it didn’t just require him to fake his way through “Knucklepuck Time.” In fact the cast, which also included Joshua Jackson, Marguerite Moreau, Elden Henson and Vincent LaRusso, all learned to skate during the making of the popular trilogy of movies. Years later, he has used these skills to show up his comedy pals at 30 Rock. He doesn’t really blame Seth though, noting that most people have forgotten his humble acting origin story.
Yeah everybody forgets, or they think it’s just a movie, but we really learned how to skate. I mean, and we have a great relationship with the NHL now because of those movies. You know they were awesome, because it was legitimate. Like we could actually skate and I skate to this day.
It’s not just Thompson who learned how to skate for the film, either. Years later, a lot of people involved in the films would say Garrette Henson, who played Guy Germaine, ended up being a great skater in real life, and that his brother Elden Henson, Joshua Jackson and Matt Doherty got pretty good at hockey, as well. In the ‘90s, some of the Mighty Ducks cast members actually lied and said they could ice skate when the first movie was coming together while others on set could apparently skate but had never acted before. Producer Jordan Kerner told Time they set up “boot camp” for both.
There was a guy named Jack White, who was a famous trainer in hockey, that we brought in. Half of our kids had never skated before and had to learn to skate. And half of our kids who skated, they had to learn to act. And so we literally had acting boot camp and skating boot camp. I wanted to have 12 or 16 weeks to do that. But of course with any studio, they’re not going to give you the money to set up a huge organization that far away from shooting, so we had to rush it. And whether we could get everybody ready to be able to perform on the ice, both from a standpoint of skating and being credible and being good, although they had to be comedic as well — that was on us.
If ducks were going to fly together, they were going to have to learn to skate together, and that’s exactly what they did for the OG Disney movie and its subsequent sequels. The movies are so fondly remembered by millennials that a series for those with a Disney+ subscription came together early in the streamer’s run (but has sadly since been canceled, despite being chock full of Mighty Ducks references).Still, while Game Changers didn't last, I will say there’s an entire generation of adult humans who are just a little younger than Seth Meyers, 50, who absolutely would have known immediately why Kenan Thompson is so smooth on the ice.
Also, just to let you know The Mighty Ducks turned 30 this year. You know, just in case you needed a reminder you were getting old.
