Who Will Play Obama on SNL? Not "Chubby" Kenan Thompson
Poor Kenan Thompson... as the ONLY black member of the current Saturday Night Live cast, he would have been the obvious choice to play Barack Obama in any sketches involving the presidential candidate - a job that could have possibly become quite lucrative for him, if Obama does become the next president of the United States. We're talking at least 4 years of guaranteed employment! However, Mr Thompson clearly isn't being considered for the task, as the producers of SNL are on the hunt for a black comic to join the SNL cast and assume the job of portraying Obama. Apparently, according to the below article, Kenan Thompson is thought to be a little too plump! Let's just hope that the SNL producers don't get too "creative" and instead have a white actor in black face play Obama.
FROM THE NEW YORK OBSERVER:
Who Will Play Obama on SNL?
On a recent episode of 30 Rock, an NBC sitcom about the making of a Saturday Night Live–like comedy show, a dilemma arises when the
cast’s only black actor goes missing.
“Can I play Barack Obama?” asked an opportunistic white cast member.
The answer, of course, was no.
It just so happens that the real Saturday Night Live is faced with that very conundrum every week.
Only one current cast member, Kenan Thompson, is black, which would seem to be a desirable trait in portraying Mr. Obama.
But Mr. Thompson—who starred in a movie called Fat Albert—possesses a body type that makes him better suited to execute impressions of Al Sharpton than the lanky Illinois Senator. The result: an Obama-free show.
A spokesman for Lorne Michaels, the show’s longtime producer, said that there was no word yet on who the show would cast as Mr. Obama, or when an Obama character would make its debut.
“We’ll know when we know,” the spokesman, Marc Liepis, said in an e-mail. “Truthfully, there’s no timetable on these things.”
