When Kenan Thompson auditioned for Saturday Night Live, he'd already accumulated years of acting experience. As his IMDb page demonstrates, he'd appeared in several movies, honed his sketch comedy chops on All That, and had even starred in his own TV series, Kenan & Kel, as well as his and Kel Mitchell's spinoff movie, Good Burger. The one thing he hadn't done, however, was stand-up comedy — which was a compulsory part of the audition.
"I had to do stand-up, and I'd never done stand-up before," Thompson told Rachael Ray during a 2019 appearance on her daytime talk show. "I was just a working kid actor." In advance of his audition, he went to a New York comedy club to give it a shot. "I just didn't understand how to engage with, like, 'Don't you hate airplanes?' or 'That bathroom splash is really annoying,'" the comedian said, admitting he became so nervous that his mouth became parched. "I kept drinking water, but I was never quenching my thirst, so I was drinking out of the bathroom sink. I was panicking so hard."
Whatever Thompson did in his audition won him the job, of course, but he still recalled that first stand-up performance was "terrifying."
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