Kenan Thompson
Kenan Thompson is an actor, born 1978.
He joined Saturday Night Live in 2003 and never left, which makes him the longest-tenured cast member in the show's history and the first regular hired who was born after it premiered in 1975. Both of those facts are strange, because he was already famous before he got there. Nickelodeon had him as a teenager on the sketch series All That and then in his own sitcom with Kel Mitchell, and he was in cinemas as Russ Tyler in D2: The Mighty Ducks and as Dexter Reed in Good Burger long before anyone at Studio 8H had heard of him.
His gift is generosity. Thompson is the cast member who makes other people's sketches work, playing the exasperated host, the smug game-show contestant, the neighbour with an opinion, always at the exact temperature the scene needs and never trying to win it. He can also carry a bad premise across the finish line on pure conviction, which is the least glamorous skill in live comedy and the reason he has outlasted everyone.
The film career has never matched the television one. Mostly he is hired for a scene or two of relief in family pictures, Snakes on a Plane, Home Sweet Home Alone, Hubie Halloween, or for voice work, Tiny Diamond across the Trolls films, Bricklebaum in The Grinch, Gus in Wonder Park. The exceptions are the Nickelodeon legacy jobs he clearly cares about, including Good Burger 2 in 2023, and the occasional live-action part with a bit of edge on it, such as Roland in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. NBC also gave him his own sitcom, Kenan, from 2021 to 2022.
Movies (48)
- Scary Movie (2026)
- The Grinch (2018)
- Trolls Band Together (2023)
- Love Don't Co$t a Thing (2003)
- Trolls World Tour (2020)
- Home Sweet Home Alone (2021)
- Clifford the Big Red Dog (2021)
- Snakes on a Plane (2006)
- Good Burger 2 (2023)
- Going in Style (2017)
- The Magic of Belle Isle (2012)
- Good Burger (1997)
- Lorne (2026)
- Wonder Park (2019)
- The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle (2000)
- D3: The Mighty Ducks (1996)
- Rock Dog (2016)
- Heavyweights (1995)
- Bros (2022)
- Hubie Halloween (2020)
- D2: The Mighty Ducks (1994)
- Stan Helsing (2009)
- Fat Albert (2004)
- Barbershop 2: Back in Business (2004)
- Trolls Holiday in Harmony (2021)
- My Boss's Daughter (2003)
- Space Chimps (2008)
- They Came Together (2014)
- Saturday Night Live: The Best of Amy Poehler (2009)
- The Master of Disguise (2002)
TV (31)
- The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (2014)
- Late Night with Seth Meyers (2014)
- Saturday Night Live (1975)
- Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2015)
- People's Choice Awards (1975)
- The Steve Harvey Show (1996)
- All That (1994)
- Trolls: TrollsTopia (2020)
- Match Game (2016)
- A Little Late with Lilly Singh (2019)
- Kenan & Kel (1996)
- Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? (2019)
- The Boys Presents: Diabolical (2022)
- Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (2020)
- Bless the Harts (2019)
- SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night (2025)
- Oh Yeah! Cartoons (1998)
- Off Centre (2001)
- Figure It Out (1997)
- Nature Cat (2015)
- All That (2019)
- Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock (2022)
- Kenan (2021)
- Studio C (2012)
- Bupkis (2023)
- Mark Twain Prize (1999)
- Double Dare (2018)
- The Pete Davidson Show (2026)
- Saturday Night Live Weekend Update Thursday (2008)
- That Damn Michael Che (2021)
Where to start with Kenan Thompson
The obvious answer is Saturday Night Live, and it is the right one, but treat it as a career rather than a title: pick any season after 2010 and watch how often he is the person holding a sketch together from the side of frame.
For the origin story, Good Burger is the one that still plays, a genuinely silly film with a real comic double act at the middle of it, and Kenan & Kel is the series that built it. Good Burger 2 is the reunion, arriving twenty-six years later and better than that gap has any right to allow.
D2: The Mighty Ducks and Heavyweights are the child-actor curios, both fun. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is the sharpest use of adult Thompson outside sketch. Among the voice roles, Trolls World Tour gives him the most to do. Fat Albert is the one film that handed him a title role, and the results are mixed at best.