Tag: kenan thompson
Nickelodeon Is Reviving ‘All That’ With Kenan Thompson as Executive Producer
Article via Variety
“All That” was the show that kept on giving to Nickelodeon over the course of a decade in the 1990s and 2000s. Now the company’s president thinks a revival of the sketch-comedy series could be all that — and more.
Nickelodeon will revive the program — a “Saturday Night Live” for the tween set — with an all-new cast. But the show will have callbacks to its past as well. Kenan Thompson, the long-running “SNL” cast member who got his start on television when “All That” launched in 1994, will serve as an executive producer. Nickelodeon expects some former cast members to make appearances in the series.
The sketch comedy show “stayed in the zeitgeist for many years,” Brian Robbins, president of Nickelodeon, tells Variety. “People are really fond of it.” One regular sketch, “Good Burger,” was set in a fast-food restaurant with a clueless cashier, and served up the premise for an original movie in 1997. Kids also loved recurring characters like “Walter the Earboy,” “The Spice Boys,” and “Baggin’ Saggin’ Barry.”
Thompson is one of the people who remembers the series fondly. “It means everything to me,” he told Variety. “It was my first job that I ever had. It gave me an opportunity.”
Robbins was a co-creator and an executive producer of the original run of the series, which during its time featured Thompson, Kel Mitchell, Amanda Bynes, Nick Cannon and Jamie Spears, among others. Many of the cast members went on to star in other landmark Nickelodeon series, such as “The Amanda Show,” “Kenan and Kel” and “Drake and Josh.” Thompson said many of the show’s stars remain close more than a decade after “All That” went off the air.
An “All That” revival would continue Nickelodeon’s recent efforts to dig into its past to help secure its future. In recent years, Nickelodeon executives have tested new editions of one-time stalwarts like “Hey Arnold” and “Legends of the Hidden Temple,” sometimes as movie specials. Such programs can spur viewing by both parents and children, as one generation tries to interest another in favorite pieces of popular culture.
“We think there’s a great opportunity to find the next pool of stars,” said Robbins. “We want to bring the show back in a real fun way. This summer, we are going to bring back a lot of the original cast and the cast through the years, and let them introduce the new cast of ‘All That’ to the world.” He suggested the program would be “a sort of mash-up of some of the old sketches and a lot of new sketches.”
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Angelique Bates Opens Up About Abu$e She Endured While On Nickelodeon’s ‘All That!’ TV Show
Kenan Thompson: Kanye West held ‘SNL’ cast ‘hostage’ during Trump rant
Kenan Thompson‘s 16th season on “Saturday Night Live” kicked off with something of a head scratch this weekend, thanks in part to Kanye West’s closing, pro-Trump comments.
“He voiced his opinion, very loudly, for a long time,” the comedian recalled on Monday’s episode of “Late Night with Seth Meyers.” “We’re all entitled to our opinion, but you know, I don’t know if that’s the moment, necessarily, to hold people hostage like that, but hey.”
Following the opening monologue, Thompson said he got to “watch the circus unfold” from afar, as West brought the cast on stage after his performance. Thompson, who preferred to watch the musical act on TV, was happy he stayed backstage.
“As soon as he said, ‘Hey, join me up on stage, everybody,’ I was like, ‘Oh, there goes the little cheese in the mousetrap.’ It’s going down,” Thompson said. “I felt so bad for those guys, because it’s hard to stand there and not be able to debate somebody who is going so far against your personal opinion, and just stand there and take it.”
He continued, “We are fair. We’re in a service business, we try to cater to the host, make sure they have a good show and what not, and then when musical guests come in and they’re a little bit crazy, maybe they’re a little bit crazy, we let them have that. But we don’t judge, we’re not there to judge.”
West received a flurry of boos inside Studio 8H in response to his rant supporting President Trump.
“There are so many times I talk to like a white person about this and they say, ‘How could you like Trump? He’s racist.’ Well, if I was concerned about racism I would’ve moved out of America a long time ago,” West said.
While Trump, 70, applauded West’s remarks and slammed “SNL,” the Yeezy mastermind later called for the abolition of the 13th Amendment before clarifying his remarks.
“Not abolish but. let’s amend the 13th amendment,” West tweeted Sunday. “We apply everyone’s opinions to our platform.”