Kenan Thompson will earn air miles while traveling among his new NBC sitcom Kenan and Saturday Night Live.
Comedian and co-star Chris Redd comes and goes from Los Angeles and New York to film both shows.
During a virtual press conference, he told Deadline that he only attended the SNL Christmas show once, but will see how it will be in the future.
“We’ll see how tiring it gets when it has to become a repetitive kind of thing, but we did it at the Christmas show and Chris and I went there on Friday and showed up at the rehearsal that night and ended up doing the show and then we had three weeks break before we start another job. It wasn’t that stressful, but we’ll see how it changes when it’s just one day between them, but I’ll be running back to my new family, so I won’t be overly exhausting, because we are going to hold on. “
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Thompson added that “we live in a different time” when it comes to SNL, where it used to be that people “left the show and went on to their careers”, but that is no longer the case.
Chris Redd added that he loves doing shows with scripts and sketches, especially with one of his best friends. “I don’t want to see this as an exit strategy, I just see it as another way of creating,” he said.
Lorne Michaels, which executive produces Kenan, said earlier that one of the reasons why Kenan was able to do this show and Saturday Night Live was that shows like this are now ten episodes. “He goes back and forth to Los Angeles. But Kenan can come the day before and he’ll be fine; he just knows the drill so well, ”he told New York magazine.
Thompson said the show, which launched on February 16, is the show’s third iteration. It was originally piloted in 2019 with Jackie Clarke writing and Chris Rock directing, but was re-developed with David Caspe joining as showrunner and Clarke co-writing. Don Johnson also replaced Andy Garcia in the series.
Thompson said the development of the show outside of the traditional pilot process helped. “It was going in a direction for the original pilot we shot and Chris Rock was involved in that it was great and then we had a moment and an opportunity to sit down with him and go even deeper instead of being under pressure from the pilot week,” he said. “We stretched as far as it is now and I think we are all very grateful that we had the chance to live with the material for a while. The universe has just unfolded in a way that we have the cast we’re dealing with now. “
The cast also talked about filming the show during the Covid-19 pandemic. The table readings were initially done with Zoom and Thompson said that it made them “strange” and “unstable”.
Chris Redd’s internet was so bad that the production sent him a wi-fi amplifier. “It would only come out when it was about to reach the end point,” said Kimrie Lewis.
Don Johnson added that the only times he saw the faces of the cast members was when they were in the character.
“When we were able to get in touch in person, everything worked, so we were very happy to be together in a room, finally doing things,” added Thompson.
Kenan follows a widowed father, Kenan (Thompson), who is struggling to get a top job as a presenter for a morning show in Atlanta and raising his two daughters. As Kenan tries to move on, his father-in-law (Johnson), brother (Redd) and co-workers have strong opinions about the best way to live his life.
The program focuses on family relationships while Kenan tries to recover his life after his wife’s death. Kenan’s daughters are his world – the very intelligent Aubrey (Dani Lane) and the silly and unpredictable Birdie (Dannah Lane). He struggles to balance child rearing as a single parent and the host of his program, which leads him to reluctantly accept help from his father-in-law. Rick was an itinerant saxophonist when his daughter, Cori (Niccole Thurman), was young and lost much of his childhood, so he wants to make peace with his granddaughters, although his traditional parenting style doesn’t often match Kenan’s.
At work, Kenan excels in his work with the help of his executive producer Mika (Lewis). Mika can get tense, especially when Gary, as Kenan’s less-than-administrative manager, tries to fit in, but Mika remains Kenan’s confidant and ally. They are able to be vulnerable to each other and connect as friends … and maybe something else.
Lorne Michaels, David Caspe, Jackie Clarke, Kenan Thompson, Ken Whittingham and Andrew Singer serve as executive producers. Kenan is produced by Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group, in association with Broadway Video.