It’s been 20 years since Kenan & Kel first debuted on Nickelodeon. If you were a child of the ’90s, then you adored watching cast members Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell first on All That and then on their spin-off show, Kenan & Kel. The show along with Kenan and Kel’s Good Burger gave us a ton of laughs into the twenty-first century. However, though Kenan Thompson snagged a role on NBC‘s Saturday Night Live after Kenan & Kel wrapped, Kel Mitchell remained in the children and teen sector with appearances on shows like The Proud Family and most recently, Game Shakers.
So why didn’t Kel ever try his hand at SNL? Well apparently he did, and it didn’t go so great. Last year, during a Reddit Ask Me Anything session, the comedian opened up about his disastrous audition for the iconic sketch comedy show. Apparently, Tina Fey was in the room for his perfomance, and Kel knew immediately by her reaction that he’d flopped. He said,
“I did like, I think it’s hilarious now thinking about it, but now doing standup and being good at it now, i realize now what I did was not good. But basically I did this joke about DMX – if DMX was in Toy Story. It was so bad, it was good, to me. And I remember Tina Fey was there, and I remember afterwards she was like “Good job!” but I think it was a little too crazy for SNL.”
Unfortunately, the awkwardness didn’t end there. As a second part of his audition, Kel whipped up another sketch. This time it involved the legendary Michael Jackson having a tree allergy. He said, “I did a song about Michael Jackson if he was allergic to trees! Because, you know, he used to love to sit in trees, if you saw that classic interview that he had, and I thought it would be funny if he was allergic to trees and he’s sitting in one sneezing! So I remember I starting dancing, I think my energy was so crazy, I did like a moonwalk move and actually stepped on one of the tables right in front of the stage, and flipped the table with someone’s drink on it over, it was a MESS!”
Needless to say, Kel was not offered a spot on the SNL cast, though Kenan (who is not nearly as funny) was. Luckily, Kel is still super positive about the entire experience and he’s back on Nickelodeon in Game Shakers, making an entirely new generation laugh.
