Kenan Thompson says he’s also confused about Morgan Wallen abruptly walking off the Saturday Night Live stage this past weekend.
As seen in a clip circulating online, the 31-year-old country music star dipped immediately after hugging guest host Mikey Madison, 26.
"I don't know what goes through people's minds when they decide to do stuff like that. I don't know if he understood the assignment or not, or if he was really feeling a certain kind of way," Thompson, 46, told Entertainment Weekly, adding that he “definitely saw it” when Wallen strolled out during the show’s “goodnights.”
"You see somebody before you get a chance to say hi or say good job or anything like that, they just dipping," he added. "I thought maybe he had to go to the potty or something."
"It's definitely a spike in the norm," Thompson explained. "We're so used to everybody just turning around and high-fiving us, everybody's saying, 'Good job, good job, good job.' So when there's a departure from that, it's like, hmm, 'I wonder what that's about?'"
Thompson, SNL’s longest-tenured cast member, shared that he 'never met' Wallen during his recent appearance as the musical guest or during his previous episode in December 2020. (Wallen’s SNL debut, originally scheduled for October of that year, was canceled after he broke COVID-19 protocols.)
"Seems like a complicated individual, I guess," Thompson said while noting it wasn’t the first time a musical guest left suddenly.
"Prince did the same thing," he mentioned. "I'm not saying Morgan Wallen is Prince, but we weren't surprised because Prince was notoriously kind of standoffish. It's just how he was. So we just thought like, 'Okay, now he's gone back into fantasyland.'"
He continued, "But Saturday I guess it was just different because it just felt so abrupt. And it was already such a small grouping on the stage anyway. So it was just like, oh wow, that was pretty visible. You know what I'm saying? It was a pretty visible thing."
Following the show, Wallen uploaded a photo of a private jet with the caption, “Get me to God’s country" to his Instagram Story.
"The 'God's country' of it all is strange because it's like, what are you trying to say? You trying to say that we are not in God's country? We're not all in God's country? We're not all under God's umbrella? That's not necessarily my favorite," Thompson said. "But whatever. Moving on, we got a new show. We got Jack Black this week. We're here talking about GERD. We will be fine."
Sources connected to Wallen’s camp told Variety that the singer had a good time and did not mean to slight anyone with his exit nor his Instagram post.
