Kenan Thompson Weighs In on His Future at SNL — and If He or Lorne Michaels Will Leave First

Kenan Thompson won’t be having his Saturday Night Live swan song anytime soon if he has anything to say about it.

As the show’s longest-tenured cast member, the comedian, 46, revealed that he isn’t ready to leave Studio 8H and wants to achieve more milestones before hanging up his hat.

“It would be cool if I never left the show. That’d be crazy,” Thompson told Entertainment Weekly.

Thompson has been part of the NBC sketch comedy series for 22 seasons after joining the show in 2003. He has been nominated five times for his work on SNL at the Emmy Awards, and took home a statue in 2018 for co-writing the sketch “Come Back, Barack.”

Nearly four years after sharing that he wanted to stay for at least 20 seasons on SNL, he now has his sights on loftier goals.

“I guess the only other milestone would be just to be the forever cast member. Just never leave the show,” he told the outlet. “I don’t really know. Thirty [seasons] is like, okay, that’s just another number kind of thing. Twenty was just such a thing that nobody had ever done.” 

“People had gotten into their teens before, but nobody had gotten all the way up to 20. And then I was close to doing it,” he added. “Once I started getting into 17, I was like, well, if I can, I would love to stick around till 20. And now here we are at 22, so I don’t know.”

When asked who would be the first to leave him or show creator Lorne Michaels, he replied, “That’s a great question. I have no idea. I feel like we’ll both just ride until the wheels fall off.”

Thompson previously told PEOPLE that working on the variety series is “hands down” the best job in television.

“It’s crazy because most people do eight [seasons] max, you know what I mean? Or 12. But it’s a one-of-a-kind place,” he shared in January. “It’s the people in front and behind that embrace it, need it. So when they call me, what, am I not supposed to oblige the greatest job in the world? So it’s just out of love. What a blessing it is to have steady employment.”

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Saturday Night Live airs Saturdays at 11:30 p.m. ET on NBC.