Originally published at: SNL cast exodus continues with Chris Redd announcing his departure | Boing Boing
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Kenan Thompson, however, apparently plans on staying until he dies (not a dig, I like Thompson).
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Well, dammit. Chris was just starting to catch his stride.
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CR is also hilarious in the 2017 sitcom Disjointed.
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Is there a reason for this mass exodus?
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Doing a live TV show every week is grueling and doesn’t pay very well. SNL is kinda like grad school for comedians. You do it until you’ve honed your craft and get better offers from Hollywood.
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With Chris Redd in particular, I’d be surprised if it weren’t a contract-related thing. The show is weeks from air at this point. If he’s working on a movie and other projects, it’s possible SNL wasn’t giving him the wiggle room he needed to make all of it work – minus the pay to justify locking him in the studio.
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(wiki) In 2014, SNL head writer Brian H. Tucker noted that simply putting “KENAN REACTS” would get a script more laughs, further elaborating, “Put him in your sketch somewhere, anywhere, and your sketch will get better. Because Kenan knows how to take ordinary lines and make them funny, and take funny lines and make them special.”[36] Similarly, Lorne Michaels in a 2019 article would refer to Thompson as “the person I most rely on in the cast”.[34] Vulture referred to him as the “heir apparent” to Phil Hartman, both being “the glue” of their respective casts.[
Kenan never fails to make me laugh.
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I’ve heard a lot of comedians say that their time on SNL was really rough, but Kenan seems to thrive there. He’s clearly found a job that, for him, does not feel like work, and I probably wouldn’t leave that kind of a job either. My uncle had a job like that (for him). He used to tell me he hoped they never found out how much he loved his job because they’d probably stop paying him. His job? Archivist for Harris County, Texas.
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That’s always been true though. So why this particular sudden mass exodus that appears unusual in the history of the show?
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I suppose that depends on what you mean by unusual. It has happened before. Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris, Laraine Newman, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, and Harry Shearer all left in 1980. There was similar turnover a year later, and again in 85 and 86. The 80s were kind of a hot mess for SNL.
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I think this may be the biggest single-season exodus since the end of season 10 (which saw a 100% cast turnover largely due to a writers’ strike).
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