Morgan Wallen sparked strong reactions online last month when he abruptly walked off the โSaturday Night Liveโ stage at the end of an episode in which he served as musical guest.
However, according to Bowen Yang, the country singerโs viral exit was hardly a watercooler topic the next day among the โSNLโ cast.ย
โThis is the Godโs honest truth: Nothing happened, and so even after it happened, we all just showed up to work the next day because itโs like, youโve just got to move on to the next thing,โ the โSNLโ star said while co-hosting TODAY with Jenna & Friends on April 7.ย
During the March 29 episode of โSNL,โ Wallen walked offstage abruptly as the credits rolled, instead of following tradition and mingling with the cast members.
Kenan Thompson, who appeared as a guest on TODAY with Jenna & Friends, also weighed in on the viral moment.
โIโm not familiar,โ Thompson joked when Jenna Bush Hager asked him about Wallen’s exit.
Thompson agreed with Yang that it was time to leave the moment in the past.
โYouโve got to move on, you know what I mean?โ he said. โAnd I wish we would give more props to (host) Mikey (Madison) because she had a great show, and I think we would like to echo that a little more.โ
Madison, who recently won an Oscar for her starring role in โAnora,โ made her โSNLโ hosting debut the night Wallen appeared as the musical guest.
Thompson also shared his thoughts on Wallenโs abrupt exit in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly.ย
โI donโt know what goes through peopleโs minds when they decide to do stuff like that. I donโt know if he understood the assignment or not, or if he was really feeling a certain kind of way,โ he said.
โYou see somebody before you get a chance to say hi or say good job or anything like that, they just dipping,โ he also said. โI thought maybe he had to go to the potty or something.โ
He added that Wallenโs unexpected departure was โa spike in the norm.โ
โWeโre so used to everybody just turning around and high-fiving us, everybodyโs saying, โGood job, good job, good job.โ So when thereโs a departure from that, itโs like, hmm, I wonder what thatโs about?โ
โSNLโ poked fun at Wallenโs quick exit during this weekend’s episode.
During the โWeekend Updateโ segment on April 5, co-host Colin Jost dropped a reference to Wallen while discussing the recent upheaval in the stock market.
โJust in the past two days, investors have lost over $6 trillion,โ he said. โMoney is leaving the stock market faster than Morgan Wallen at goodnights.โ
Wallenโs appearance on โSNLโ came after another controversy involving the country star and the show several years ago.
He had been scheduled to appear as the musical guest in October 2020, but was pulled from the showโs lineup after videos surfaced of him partying without a mask during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Wallen was later rebooked on the show and appeared as the musical guest that December.
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