» Kenan Thompson on Morgan Wallen’s ‘SNL’ exit: ‘Not my favourite’

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Kenan Thompson has spoken out on Morgan Wallen’s viral retreat from the Saturday Night Live stage over the weekend.

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After performing two songs from his forthcoming album, I’m The Problem, Wallen stirred controversy early Sunday morning when he abruptly walked off the stage during the closing credits of SNL.

Instead of gladhanding with the rest of the cast, the 31-year-old country superstar said a brief few words to host Mikey Madison, giving her a one-armed hug, before marching off without so much as a glance behind him.

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Shortly afterwards, Wallen posted a photo of a private plane waiting for him on a tarmac in New York, captioning it, “Get me to God’s country.”

But the two-time Grammy nominee riled some fans of the show, who shared screenshots of cast members Ego Nwodim and Thompson reacting to his getaway and accusing him of being a “petty loser” for storming off.

“Morgan Wallen with a little more of the catty-ass petty loser s— he so proudly displayed running offstage down the center aisle & right past the camera at SNL curtain call,” one person swiped on X. “This & the tone-deaf private jet flaunt couldn’t be more lame & undercutting coming from a country star.”

Thompson told Entertainment Weekly that he “definitely saw it” when Wallen headed for the exit.

“I don’t know what goes through people’s minds when they decide to do stuff like that,” Thompson told EW of Wallen’s decision to flee without so much as a wave goodbye to the show’s cast. “I don’t know if he understood the assignment or not, or if he was really feeling a certain kind of way.”

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 The longest-tenured SNL cast member wondered if Wallen had to go to the washroom.

“You see somebody before you get a chance to say hi or say good job or anything like that, they just dipping,” Thompson said. “I thought maybe he had to go to the potty or something … It’s definitely a spike in the norm. 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 recalled how Prince also ditched the customary goodbyes when he performed on the show in 2014.

“Prince did the same thing,” he said. “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, ‘OK, now he’s gone back into fantasyland.’”

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Thompson said Wallen’s escape route “pretty visible” to the performers and didn’t go unnoticed.

“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,” he told the publication.

Thompson also addressed Wallen “Get me to God’s country” post, saying that he wasn’t a fan.

“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 favourite,” Thompson said.

But a source close to Wallen told TMZ that his hasty adieu was an “oopsie moment” and he wasn’t trying to make a big statement.

He “entered and exited the studio the same way he did Saturday night during rehearsal and camera blocking all week leading up to the live show … so he routinely headed that way when he thought it was time to go,” they told the outlet.

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Another insider told Variety that Wallen “had a good time and no slight was intended with either his prominent exit or his Instagram post.”

“The buzz misreads the star just being off-the-cuff as usual,” the trade reported. “When Wallen made a quick dart toward the camera to make his getaway, it was simply an ‘oops’ moment … that was the way he entered and exited the studio all week during rehearsal and camera blocking, so he wasn’t thinking about being on-camera when he strolled off stage.”

mdaniell@postmedia.com

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