Kenan Thompson has commented on Morgan Wallen‘s abrupt Saturday Night Live (SNL) exit.
Last Saturday (March 29), country singer Wallen appeared as the show’s musical guest, and made headlines when he cut his goodbyes short – only saying farewell to the guest host, Oscar-winning actress Mikey Madison. Typically, the SNL cast celebrate with the guest musician and host during the credits roll.
Shortly after his exit, Wallen – who is based in Nashville, Tennessee – posted an Instagram Story of a picture of his private jet and a caption that read “Get me to God’s country”.
Now, longtime cast member Kenan Thompson has commented on Wallen’s sudden exit in a comment to Entertainment Weekly. “I don’t know what goes through people’s minds when they decide to do stuff like that,” he told them. “I don’t know if he understood the assignment or not, or if he was really feeling a certain kind of way”. He joked that he “thought maybe he had to go to the potty or something.”
Thompson confirmed he “definitely saw” Wallen suddenly leave, adding: “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?”
Wallen has appeared in two episodes: last Saturday, and his first musical guest performance in 2020 (which occurred following Wallen breaking COVID-19 protocols, leading to his original debut appearance to be cancelled). Thompson claims he has “never met” Wallen during either episode, but added that he “seems like a complicated individual, I guess.”
Thompson also noted that Wallen is not the first musical guest to cut his appearance short, adding Prince also left his show early. “I’m not saying Morgan Wallen is Prince, but we weren’t surprised because Prince was notoriously kind of standoffish,” Thompson said. “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.”
Thompson then addressed Wallen’s post-exit 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 favourite. “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.”
Viewers have speculated Wallen’s exit was a snub towards the cast. One social media user noted that Wallen was standing with Madison at an unusually great distance from the cast, adding: “Am I missing something? The cast appears to be standing quite far back from the host and musical guest. The whole thing seems odd.”
“Darn, you can tell from the vibe ‘this was one of the bad ones.’”, another user wrote.
Meanwhile, a Variety report claimed that sources close to Wallen maintain the singer had a good time at the show, adding that his exit and Instagram post were not meant as a slight towards the cast.
Thank you, Mikey Madison and @MorganWallen! Goodnight! pic.twitter.com/FDlInhhHqb
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) March 30, 2025
Since January, Wallen has been teasing and releasing tracks from his upcoming album ‘I’m The Problem’, due for release on May 16. The name appears to reference some of his public scandals in recent years.
Last April, it was reported the singer had been charged with three counts of reckless endangerment and one count of disorderly conduct after throwing a chair off a rooftop bar in Tennessee. In December, he pled guilty to two misdemeanours for reckless endangerment without a weapon and was ordered to spend a week in a DUI education center and to serve a suspended sentence of two years of supervised probation.
In 2021, footage of him using a racial slur surfaced online, causing him to be dropped by a number of radio stations as well as his record label, Big Loud. Despite this, sales for his album ‘Dangerous’ surged, and Wallen maintained the Number One spot on the Billboard 200 Albums Chart for a record-breaking ten weeks. Wallen said he was “embarrassed and sorry” by his actions, and asked fans not to defend him.
In other news, in October the musician donated $500,000 to the American Red Cross as a way to support the relief effort in Hurricane Helene’s wake.
