Kenan Thompson Says Some of His Favorite Characters Are From His All That Days (Exclusive)

While Kenan Thomson might be the longest-tenured cast member in Saturday Night Live history, some of his favorite sketch comedy characters come from even earlier in his career.

Speaking to PEOPLE in a recent exclusive interview tied to his partnership with Jim Beam, Thompson, 47, says that some of the work of which he’s most proud comes from his work as a young actor in the 1990s on the children’s sketch comedy series All That.

“I’m down with the people,” Thompson says, acknowledging the continued resonance of the nostalgic series in which he starred as a teenager. “I kind of agree with everybody, you know, when it comes to [the characters people still love.] Pierre Escargot was a lot of fun.”

Pierre Escargot was a character played by Thompson while sitting in a bathtub filled with suds, wearing a rain coat and matching hat and saying phrases in poorly-pronounced French, before translating them to English.  

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Thompson says another sketch from his early days that he enjoyed was Mavis and Clavis, in which he and Ken Mitchell portrayed elderly hecklers of the show.

“That’s going all the way back. Those were two of our favorites, me and Kel, like just playing old men, you know, that were kind of reflective of the old Black men we had seen on TV or just in life and stuff like that,” Thompson says. So it was our first expression of that, you know, that we got to do out loud on the show.”

He adds: “It was just so much, so much fun. Kel used to make me laugh so much. I think he was impersonating like his dad straight up, and I was going a little older….It was really funny and cute.”

After finding success on All That, Thompson went on to co-star with Mitchell on the sitcom Kenan & Kel. He joined SNL in 2003 and is now in his 23rd season as a cast member.

Thompson adds that there are dozens of characters he’s loved dreaming up — and portraying — on SNL.

“I love ‘What’s Up With That?’ and ‘Scared Straight,’ and ‘Black Jeopardy’ … anything on the Weekend Update desk is always a lot of fun,” he says.