Kenan Thompson Shares His Kids' Hilarious Reaction to Watching Him on “SNL”: 'Why Are You Not That Guy?' (Exclusive)
- - Kenan Thompson Shares His Kids' Hilarious Reaction to Watching Him on “SNL”: 'Why Are You Not That Guy?' (Exclusive)
Virginia ChamleeJanuary 26, 2026 at 7:00 AM
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Kenan Thompson -
Kenan Thompson says his daughters are most interested in his job when it converges with their own interests
Speaking to PEOPLE, the veteran comedian and actor says of his girls: "They're more so mad if I don't take them to be around it, too"
Still, he adds, his seven- and 11-year-old daughters help keep him up-to-date on trends and pop culture
While Kenan Thompson is a veteran of late-night sketch comedy, his daughters aren't easily impressed — unless his role at Saturday Night Live converges with their own interests.
"They're more so mad if I don't take them to be around it, too," he laughs, while speaking to PEOPLE in a recent exclusive interview tied to his partnership with Jim Beam. "Like, 'You had Ariana Grande on the show.' I'm like, 'Well, yeah, don't you think that's cool?' [They're like], 'I wanted to meet her.' 'All right, but don't you think I did pretty good?'"
Thompson, 47, adds: "I get it, you know, they're in their own world."
Esther Kuhn/NBC
Kenan on SNL
While he adds that his daughters are "a little young" to watch SNL, he says they are fans of his older work — particularly "Good Burger," a sketch and, later, a movie starring he and Kel Mitchell. The pair rose to fame from a young age upon becoming cast members on All That in 1994, later joining forces for Kenan & Kel in 1996 and the original Good Burger movie (based on their All That characters) in 1997.
But even though they enjoy their dad's work, Thompson says his girls find it easy to separate him from his characters, saying he is "like weirdly drastically different from my persona on television."
"I'm pretty calm and just very casual and not so explosive or you know, smirky until something funny is happening," he says, adding, "I'm not really a joke teller, and I'm their authoritarian kind of, you know what I mean? They definitely separate the two. They're like, 'Why aren't you like that guy?' "
Thompson continues: "I'm really like a whole bunch of different people that they don't really ever get to experience. They always get to see the person that I am ... not like the exaggerated person."
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Thompson adds that his kids help him know what's relevant in pop culture — "especially my 11 year old now, like she's the finger on the young pulse of all of it."
"Like my seven year old, she's a child still, but the 11 year old knows literally about everything," he says. "She teaches me about every single soccer player, every single soccer club and it's just like they are the ones that like are aware of all these new artists, new songs ... it's vast, the amount of things that they are just like rifling through constantly, like the whole 6-7 thing, they love it and then they hate it the next day, and then they love it again, and then they hate it again, it's so funny to watch them ping-pong it, there's so much angst."
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
