Interview with Kenan Thompson

Kenan Thompson stars in the newly released horror spoof Stan Helsing. He plays the best friend of the title character, who has to face parody versions of the classic ‘80s horror icons Freddy, Jason, Pinhead, Chucky and Michael Myers. We got to talk comedy and Saturday Night Live with Thompson in a roundtable interview.

Q: How did you end up as the broken arms guy in the Gilly sketch?

Kenan Thompson: I got lucky enough to be in the first one and that joke’s kind of just been the ongoing joke, that that’s my character every time. He’s either been treated violently from some animal that he was supposed to be having a nice time with or he just fell down somewhere. Now it’s gone to the extreme where he had the poles last time. That was funny.

Q: How did you come up with the French commentator for Weekend Update?

Kenan Thompson: Me and my buddy, Brian Tucker, which I write a lot of my Update stuff and a lot of the “black” sketches, we write them together. He came, he was like, “I want to do a French comedian but he’s like a Def Jam comedian. You know what I’m saying?” Yeah. “Well, wouldn’t it be funny if he didn’t have an accent or anything but he performed in that Def Jam manner only talking about French things. It just took a little sit down brainstorm session like that. We wrote one and we really enjoyed it. Once it starts to make you laugh a lot, you know you’re on the right track.

Q: Is it more important to have an Update character or a sketch character recurring?

Kenan Thompson: It’s important to do both I think. Now it’s important to be in the digital shorts as well. You’ve got to be all over the show to try to use the show for the platform it is basically.

Q: Has the new girl been okay after the F bomb incident?

Kenan Thompson: Yeah, she’s good. We were talking about this at lunch just a minute ago. I think that Sunday following that show had to be like one of the worst days of her life because she didn’t really know. Nobody’s available for comment from our show until Monday and stuff like that, but she moved on pretty good. We got over it, made a good joke out of it on Monday in the pitch meeting.

Q: What was your joke?

Kenan Thompson: I didn’t make the joke. Like Samberg actually made the joke. He pitched something that kind of fell a little flat in the room. I think Lorne commented on how not brilliant that pitch was or something like that. Then he was trying to divert the attention. He’s like, “Well, Jenny said f***.” The whole room blew up and sh**.

Q: It seemed Lorne was cool about it.

Q: You’ve had good hosts on SNL this year. Was Megan Fox pretty game to go for those jokes about her image?

Kenan Thompson: She was great, man. She was really great. We didn’t spoof her so much. I think they might have done a couple things in the monologue but it was really about spoofing how people put her naked pictures that she’s never taken on the internet. Yeah, she was awesome. We heard all those horror stories and she was the exact opposite. She was really cool, sweet, down for whatever.

Q: Also Drew Barrymore and Gerry Butler.

Kenan Thompson: Gerry Butler was great, very down to earth Scotsman. Drew Barrymore, she’s always a delight. We love her on the show. The most in female history, yay Drew Barrymore. She’s awesome, we had fun with her. It’s challenging to recreate every week so that’s the fun part. Being off all summer and then reminding yourself like oh yeah, we have to do one of the most stressful jobs in the business on a weekly basis.

Q: What’s coming up?

Kenan Thompson: Taylor Swift’s coming. She’s hosting and musical guesting. That’ll be nice. She’s a talented little 17-year-old.

Q: So you don’t start writing until the week of?

Kenan Thompson: Yeah, not until that Monday. We’re real procrastinators. Classic.

Q: In a movie like this do they say, “We need you to be funny. Go.”?

Kenan Thompson: I find myself doing that sometimes. When I audition for comedies, it’s a fun thing. I like doing comedies a lot. I was proud to do this one because I was a fan of the Scary Movie project. I guess. I’ve been doing comedy for a while so people know what they want when they ask for my type to come and audition.

Q: When you’re babbling silly and ogling girls in cars, I imagine that might just be you riffing?

Kenan Thompson: No, Bo [Zenga] wrote a lot of that stuff. We did some improv stuff but we didn’t really need that much because I think the script was pretty strong when we all read it and we pretty much were on board with what was going on as opposed to, “Yeah, that’s funny but let’s see if we can come up with a couple more jokes.” Whatever improv’ing that we did land in the movie was pretty lucky because the script was so solid.

Q: What did you first thing when you heard the name Stan Helsing?

Kenan Thompson: I got it right away. I knew it was about to be a crazy parody. I didn’t know if it was going to be a parody of Van Helsing necessarily or if it was going to be a parody of the scary movies, like popular culture type parody. It actually turned out to be kind of neither. It was just a parody of the slasher films and everything but it really has its own story too.

Q: Yeah, you’re kind of in the classic story of the kids who take a wrong turn and end up in a bad place.

Kenan Thompson: I don't know why that happens so much. Usually I feel like when I turn the wrong way, I just turn around and get back on the right side.

Q: How do you describe Stan Helsing to people who think it’s just like Scary Movie?

Kenan Thompson: Like I said, it’s kind of following it’s own thing as opposed to just parodying pop culture. Scary Movie was parodying the Screams and I Know What You Did Last Summer and pretty much as the sequels went on, it started to become like everything else popular. We’re not necessarily parodying a specific project. We’re just doing a story and we incorporated the ‘80s monsters basically.

Q: Isn’t it time those guys got their own spoof too?

Kenan Thompson: Absolutely. That was a large part of the horror culture back in the ‘80s, those slasher films. So yeah, they deserve to be mocked.

Q: Is this kind of raunchy spoof your type of humor?

Kenan Thompson: Yeah, I like raunch. I like it nasty.

Q: Did you talk comedy with Leslie Nielsen on Stan Helsing?

Kenan Thompson: Once we got everybody on board, I think he was the last one they were looking for. He signed on pretty quickly. I don't know, it was fun times. I actually talked more so like life with him, because he used to be a dramatic actor before he was in comedies. He would talk about that a lot. He was like, “It’s funny because everyone’s thinking I’m so funny and I’m actually performing exactly how I used to in these drama movies.” It’s just that it became more viable for him doing comedy. He talked about like being Canadian and his brother’s like in Parliament over there and stuff like that, like real stuff which was a pleasure to try to get to know Leslie Nielsen the legend.

Q: Who are your favorite ‘80s horror monsters?

Kenan Thompson: For me growing up it was always between Jason and Freddy. They were always battling year after year, who’s going to be the bigger monster man this year. I got into Mike Myers recently, especially Rob Zombie’s version. Michael Myers is like a giant now in these new movies. He’s like 6’9” or something like that. He’s way larger than the original.

Q: As a fan, what did you think of Freddy vs. Jason?

Kenan Thompson: That one was weird for me. I couldn’t buy into it as easily as Alien vs Predator. I saw what they were doing there. I never thought of the monsters fighting each other. I thought it was always about torturing humans, innocent girls or virgins or whatever. Seeing them slashing at each other was just weird. I didn’t even watch that whole movie. I just watched the end battle scene between Freddy and Jason on that dock. It was just strange, a strange thing to watch.

Q: I still love those motherf***in’ snakes on that motherf***in’ plane.

Kenan Thompson: Motherf***in’ Snakes on a Motherf***in’ Plane, that sh**’s classic. I think that was Sam Jackson’s last role. I’m kidding. That’s his final role. It’s his final work of performance. It’s a masterpiece that Snakes on a Plane.

Source.