Kel Mitchell details split with Kenan Thompson, and their reunion, on ‘Club Shay Shay’
“Saturday Night Live” is not a homewrecker.
At least not for Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell, the latter said Tuesday on Shannon Sharpe’s podcast “Club Shay Shay.”
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After collaborating on several Nickelodeon shows throughout the ’90s, the former “Kenan and Kel” comedy duo lost touch, barely speaking until more than a decade later, when Mitchell was tapped to present Thompson with a 2014 Kids’ Choice Award.
During his interview with Mitchell, posted Wednesday on YouTube, Sharpe asked if losing a spot on “SNL” to Thompson — the two auditioned for the same opening on the show in 2003 — had caused the rift in their relationship. Mitchell explained that he and Thompson had begun drifting apart long before then.
“When people watch us on television, they’re thinking, ‘Oh, this is his brother. They must hang out all the time,’ but this is a job,” Mitchell said. They hadn’t been very close while making “Kenan and Kel,” and by the time they auditioned for “SNL,” they hadn’t spoken in years.
“I didn’t even know Kenan was gonna be there,” Mitchell said. “[People] felt like it was this fight, but it wasn’t. It was just a thing of, ‘Oh, you here too? OK, let’s audition.’”
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When Thompson landed the “SNL” gig, Mitchell said, he didn’t resent him for it.
“I don’t look at it as, I was upset at my boy — that wasn’t what it was,” he said. “What was really going on was what was happening behind the scenes.”
Near the end of his Nickelodeon run, Mitchell said, he began butting heads with several executives at the network. Coupled with severe stress from what he called a “toxic relationship,” the on-set turmoil led the comedian into a deep depression. At the time, Mitchell didn’t tell anyone, including Thompson, about what he was going through.
“I didn’t trust anybody at that moment,” he told Sharpe.
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“I went through a lot of depression.”
At his lowest, Mitchell turned to drugs and alcohol to cope, he said in a 2015 interview with People. “Lost and looking for answers,” the preacher’s grandson returned to his Christian roots, and “found that clarity with Christ,” he said.
His newfound faith eventually led him to reconnect with Thompson. After their reunion at the Kids Choice Awards, they had an hour-long phone call and opened up about things they had kept from each other as teenagers.
“That was good for us, to have that conversation as adults,” Mitchell said.
“We found out,” he added, “that we both had people talking within our ear … people telling me things about Kenan, people telling him things about me.”
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During their heart-to-heart, they promised they wouldn’t let that happen again.
Shortly thereafter, the pair reunited for a “Good Burger” sketch on “The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon,” and they have since reprised their roles as Ed and Dexter Reed in a 2022 “SNL” episode and in 2023’s “Good Burger 2.”
“Now, every day, we’re speaking to one another as far as brothers,” Mitchell said, “and just checking on each other.”
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