Kenan Thompson stars in the newly released horror spoof Stan Helsing. He plays the best friend of the title character, who has to face parody versions of the classic ‘80s horror icons Freddy, Jason, Pinhead, Chucky and Michael Myers. We got to talk comedy and Saturday Night Live with Thompson in a roundtable interview.

Q: How did you end up as the broken arms guy in the Gilly sketch? 

Kenan Thompson: I got lucky enough to be in the first one and that joke’s kind of just been the ongoing joke, that that’s my character every time. He’s either been treated violently from some animal that he was supposed to be having a nice time with or he just fell down somewhere. Now it’s gone to the extreme where he had the poles last time. That was funny. 

Q: How did you come up with the French commentator for Weekend Update? 

Kenan Thompson: Me and my buddy, Brian Tucker, which I write a lot of my Update stuff and a lot of the “black” sketches, we write them together. He came, he was like, “I want to do a French comedian but he’s like a Def Jam comedian. You know what I’m saying?” Yeah. “Well, wouldn’t it be funny if he didn’t have an accent or anything but he performed in that Def Jam manner only talking about French things. It just took a little sit down brainstorm session like that. We wrote one and we really enjoyed it. Once it starts to make you laugh a lot, you know you’re on the right track. 

Q: Is it more important to have an Update character or a sketch character recurring? 

Kenan Thompson: It’s important to do both I think. Now it’s important to be in the digital shorts as well. You’ve got to be all over the show to try to use the show for the platform it is basically. 

Q: Has the new girl been okay after the F bomb incident? 

Kenan Thompson: Yeah, she’s good. We were talking about this at lunch just a minute ago. I think that Sunday following that show had to be like one of the worst days of her life because she didn’t really know. Nobody’s available for comment from our show until Monday and stuff like that, but she moved on pretty good. We got over it, made a good joke out of it on Monday in the pitch meeting. 

Q: What was your joke? 

Kenan Thompson: I didn’t make the joke. Like Samberg actually made the joke. He pitched something that kind of fell a little flat in the room. I think Lorne commented on how not brilliant that pitch was or something like that. Then he was trying to divert the attention. He’s like, “Well, Jenny said f***.” The whole room blew up and sh**. 

Q: It seemed Lorne was cool about it. 

Kenan Thompson: Yeah, I mean, it happens. It’s a live show. He’s not going to fire anybody over a slip-up like that. It was an innocent thing I think. I don't think she was like, “This is my chance to say the F word on television.”

Q: You’ve had good hosts on SNL this year. Was Megan Fox pretty game to go for those jokes about her image?

Kenan Thompson: She was great, man. She was really great. We didn’t spoof her so much. I think they might have done a couple things in the monologue but it was really about spoofing how people put her naked pictures that she’s never taken on the internet. Yeah, she was awesome. We heard all those horror stories and she was the exact opposite. She was really cool, sweet, down for whatever.

Q: Also Drew Barrymore and Gerry Butler.

Kenan Thompson: Gerry Butler was great, very down to earth Scotsman. Drew Barrymore, she’s always a delight. We love her on the show. The most in female history, yay Drew Barrymore. She’s awesome, we had fun with her. It’s challenging to recreate every week so that’s the fun part. Being off all summer and then reminding yourself like oh yeah, we have to do one of the most stressful jobs in the business on a weekly basis.

Q: What’s coming up?

Kenan Thompson: Taylor Swift’s coming. She’s hosting and musical guesting. That’ll be nice. She’s a talented little 17-year-old.

Q: So you don’t start writing until the week of?

Kenan Thompson: Yeah, not until that Monday. We’re real procrastinators. Classic.