Kenan Thompson almost walked away from Hollywood before his career truly began.
The “Saturday Night Live” veteran, 48, told Amy Poehler, 54, on her “Good Hang” podcast that filming the 1994 sequel “D2: The Mighty Ducks” pushed him to the breaking point. Thompson was cast as Russ Tyler, a hockey prodigy, despite having zero experience on ice.
Thompson had grown up in Atlanta “busting my ass constantly” at the roller rink, he said, but that translated poorly to the demands of hockey training. “You don’t feel anything as a kid. I just feel the knots later,” he recalled.
The lie that landed him the role was a casual addition to his resume. “I put it on my resume under special skills that I could roller skate… But I never in a million years considered hockey,” Thompson admitted. Production cast him anyway, and the consequences arrived immediately.
The first day of hockey camp fell on his 15th birthday. “I wanted to learn, but after that first day of hockey camp, which was on my birthday, my 15th birthday, I wanted to quit it all,” he shared. “I was like, ‘I don’t want to be an actor, if this is what it’s about.'”
His mother refused to let him walk away. “She was like, ‘No, go back tomorrow,'” Thompson said. He kept returning day after day, and within about eight weeks across both sequels, he had learned to skate proficiently.
Poehler witnessed the results firsthand years later during “SNL’s” December Christmas shows at 30 Rock. The cast would head down to the ice rink, and she watched Thompson glide through complex maneuvers with ease. “I go down there and I see Kenan and… You are skating forward, skating backwards, skating sideways, doing a thing. Doing 45 million tricks,” she said on the podcast.
Thompson’s early perseverance paid off beyond just hockey skills. He noted that production teams knowing each other created opportunities throughout his youth. “To have that so young, it just pointed me confidently in the direction of like ‘This is what I feel like I should be doing,'” he reflected.
That confidence carried him through child roles in “Good Burger,” “Fat Albert,” “Heavyweights,” and “Scary Movie” before he joined “Saturday Night Live” in 2003 as its youngest cast member. He remains the show’s longest-running performer.
Thompson reprised his Russ Tyler role in 1996’s “D3: The Mighty Ducks,” completing the trilogy that had nearly ended his acting ambitions before they could fully take shape.
Poehler’s “Good Hang” podcast episode featuring Thompson is available now.