-It's always great to see you, bud.
-Buddy, good to see you.
Good to see y'all.
-I mean, come on, that's pretty good, right?
-Come on. Come on.
Good to see the Roots.
-Yeah, that's right, the Roots right there, come on.
Season finale of "Saturday Night Live."
-Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes.
It's a big show, Natasha Lyonne.
Or White Whoopi, as I like to call her.
[ Laughter ] -You call -- White Whoopi?
-Yeah, she's got that gravelly --
You ever heard her talk? -Yeah.
-Oh, and she's very New York.
She sounds like Whoopi.
-You think she's sounds like Whoopi Goldberg?
She's such a funny person, I know a giant fan of the show,
so I think her hosting -- she's like, freaking out.
-She's the best. -It's gonna be fun, yeah, yeah.
-It's gonna be a great show.
-You've reached an incredible stat that I read recently.
Is it 1,500 sketches that you've been in?
-Yes.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-1,500?
1,500 sketches.
-1,500!
-Wow. -Yeah.
It seems like a lot. -It does.
It is a lot. It definitely is a lot.
I mean, that's wild.
Did you know going into the show that you'd hit that mark?
-Only that day. Like, somebody posted like,
"Kenan Thompson is only 3 sketches away from 1,500."
I was like, "Really? Like, that's crazy.
I missed all 1,490 --" I wasn't counting.
-Yeah, no one was counting. Yeah, but that's wild.
-But yeah, and then I saw that I had four sketches that day.
And then at the dress rehearsal they were all in, so I was like,
"Oh, snap, I'm going to, like, do this tonight, basically."
So I had that moment of like, "That's pretty cool."
And then after I -- I didn't think anybody was going to be,
like, waiting to celebrate it necessarily but, you know,
our tender staff and crew were back there with, like,
a card and they were all clapping.
-"SNL"? -It was a nice moment.
-Nah, come on, buddy, that's great. I'm so happy.
[ Cheers and applause ] -Thank you.
-Couldn't happen to a better guy.
Do you know what to do now in a sketch, like, when you have
a line and it just bombs, and it just gets no laughs?
-I do now. Kind of like that Whoopi joke earlier.
[ Laughter ]
Yeah, I just laugh through it and go with it.
But my first experience with that was not great, necessarily.
It was, like, the first time -- -Do you remember it?
-Yeah. It was the first time a writer, like, wrote me a sketch
where I was, like, a leading person.
And it was called "Randy the Bellhop."
-Hold your applause. -You know what I'm saying?
[ Laughter ] Relax.
-"Do Randy, man!" -You know what I'm saying?
"Do that Randy, man. We don't want to hear that --"
[ Laughter ]
So, it's called "Randy the Bellhop."
I was a bellhop doing shenanigans whatever, checking in people.
Anyway, I flubbed a line, like, really, really hard.
I stumbled over it, and I just let it be quiet.
I was just like -- I didn't try to fix it or anything.
I didn't try to laugh through it or nothing.
I didn't have the confidence to, like, continue.
I just let the moment, like, hit the floor.
-And just froze? -And it was very, very quiet.
And I heard this one lady go, "Aww."
[ Laughter ]
-Oh, that's bad. -You know what I mean?
-"Aww."
-I didn't even react to that. -Yeah.
-I was so green. I was just like,
"Yeah, this is not going to --" I finished the sketch
or whatever, and they didn't write for me much after that.
It's fine. -It makes you feel like you're
letting them down, you know, when you're doing --
when the writer writes something for you.
You're so honored that they wrote for you.
-1,000%. I was so nervous, you know what I mean?
And I was just shaky and blah blah blah.
But now I just -- I really enjoy when things go off-rail.
-Yeah, it's just a little different.
-It's kind of the best. -Yeah.
[ Laughter ] If something just sits here
and just tanks, you just kind of go like --
-It pumps me up. Like, I want to get crazy and,
like, start running through the audience or something
if a joke doesn't work. [ Laughter ]
It's like, "Oh, y'all don't like that?
Well, how do you like this?" -Yeah!
Can you clear something up here? 'Cause I --
Samuel L. Jackson recently said
that you got him banned from "SNL."
Do you know what he's talking about?
-I don't have the authority to do that.
I don't know why he thinks that. [ Laughter ]
But, no, I -- This is a great story.
Which camera am I on? -You can go to one.
-Hey, Sam. [ Laughter ]
It's all good, bro. [ Laughter ]
You're welcome any time, from what I've been hearing.
Anyway, he dropped the F bomb on the show, but he says
I was supposed to cut him off before that.
But the cue card, it was just an F on the cue card.
It wasn't, like, the whole word. -Oh, yeah, no other letters.
-I was thinking he was just gonna go, like, a fake move
and stop at the "f-," you know what I mean?
-Of course. "What the f-" -But he went full train at it
because, you know, I guess he's a method kind of guy.
-Exactly, yeah. [ Laughter ]
A method guy.
-So when he did it the first -- He did it twice!
When he did it the first time, I was processing like,
"Oh, snap, he did it and I didn't make it," or whatever.
"I didn't cut him off in time." -'Cause you're live.
-I was like "Okay, whatever, that was pretty cool, but we
kind of expect the F word of Sam Jackson, so no harm done."
-Yeah, every time he's on,
we know that that's probably going to happen.
-Yeah. But then he doubled down and said it again, I was like,
"Yo, my man, we gotta pay for those,
you know what I'm saying?" [ Laughter ]
And it got a reaction... -A lot of money, yeah, yeah.
-...and we were able to, like, get out of the moment.
Yeah, but he was -- he's been mad at me for that.
So, my bad, bro. You know what I'm saying?
I didn't think he was gonna do it like that.
-No, no, he doesn't get mad. -Come on in whenever you want.
-He's the greatest. -It's Sam Jackson.
Who doesn't want Sam Jackson on? -Sam Jackson, come on.
Yeah, you can host "The Tonight Show" if you want, Sam.
-Right, you heard it. -Yeah, come on, bud.
We love you, yeah. -You heard it here.
-I love your impressions.
I like David Ortiz, "Big Papi."
-Oh, he's the best. -When you do that.
-He's the best. -Yeah, I mean that, yeah.
[ Laughter ] -He's the best.
-You got to meet him.
[ Cheers and applause ] -Yeah. I love him.
-What does he think of the impression?
-You know, it was my chance to do, like, a Scarface impression,
you know what I mean? When I heard that, you know --
"Big Papi" talk like that, I was like, "Oh, my God.
[ as Ortiz ] I can actually do it, man, you know what I'm saying?
Take my Tony Montana moment.
You know what I'm saying?" -"That's how you do it."
-"Talk about the Red Sox." [ Laughter ]
"Maybe talk about -- talk about Miami a little bit."
-[ as Ortiz ] "A little bit."
-[ Normal voice ] He's just such a jolly person.
It allows for me to have that fun like that.
And, yeah, I met him, I did his podcast, and he was like,
[as Ortiz] "Yo, my man, I knew I made it
when you was doing me on the show."
[ Laughter ]
[ Normal voice ] I love that guy.
Big Papi. Big lunch. -He's the best, man.
-He likes to have a big lunch. -I love that guy.
I know you just started this production company.
-Yeah, shout-out. -And this is a big deal, bud.
-Yeah, shout-out to Artists for Artists, thank you very much.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-This is the chapter -- This is what you dream of.
-I feel like this is the next stage in life.
So I partnered with my buddy Johnny Ryan.
And we started this thing where it's going to allow for
lots of things to come under it, and, uh --
-It's called Artists for Artists?
-Artists for Artists because we believe in artists being able
to have some ownership kind of in what they do,
you know what I mean, so even if it has to come out
of our portion or our proceeds, we want to make sure that,
you know, anybody that does a movie should be able to get
a percentage of that movie for as long as it's out,
you know what I mean? Not just being paid to show up
and do the work, you should have participation as it goes along.
Like, imagine if you had participation in "Beetlejuice."
Just take that, for example, a 40-year-old idea or whatever
and you have a percentage of that, that's way better
than just getting whatever check they gave him in 1988.
You know what I'm saying? -Exactly. Yeah, right.
-That's kind of the strategy of it.
But also it's gonna be the mothership.
It's gonna allow for a lot of other things --
-You're doing documentaries, you're doing --
-Docs, movies, a lot of stuff
that I don't necessarily have to be at to happen.
-But you're doing a live thing too.
What are you doing with Mike Tyson?
-Yeah, we have, you know, a live element too.
'Cause we're big Broadway fans, me and my partner.
And, you know, we're fans of everything first, kind of,
so we're launching with Tyson coming back to the stage with
"Undisputed Truth 2."
He did his one-man show back in the day.
I think Spike was directing it. -Yeah.
-This is part two. So we're starting with that
and other stuff like that. -How'd you meet Mike?
-I met Mike -- He did a "What's Up With That?" back in the day,
actually, and he was -- -Oh, did he really?
-Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was very funny.
He got up and like, you know, turned around
and, like, shook his butt in the camera.
[ Laughter ] Stuff like that.
-All the stuff couldn't happen to a better guy.
Congrats on the season finale of "SNL."
Kenan Thompson right here, ladies and gentlemen.
-Thank you, man. -The one and only.
The season finale of "Saturday Night Live" is this weekend
with host Natasha Lyonne
and musical guest Japanese Breakfast.