Morgan Wallen sparked strong reactions online last month when he abruptly walked off the “Saturday Night Live” stage at the end of an episode in which he served as musical guest.
However, according to Bowen Yang, the country singer’s viral exit was hardly a watercooler topic the next day among the “SNL” cast.
“This is the God’s honest truth: Nothing happened, and so even after it happened, we all just showed up to work the next day because it’s like, you’ve just got to move on to the next thing,” the “SNL” star said while co-hosting "TODAY with Jenna & Friends" on April 7.
During the March 29 episode of “SNL,” Wallen walked offstage abruptly as the credits rolled, instead of following tradition and mingling with the cast members.
Kenan Thompson, who appeared as a guest on "TODAY with Jenna & Friends" also weighed in on the viral moment.
“I’m not familiar,” Thompson joked when Jenna Bush Hager asked him about Wallen’s exit.
Thompson agreed with Yang that it was time to leave the moment in the past.
“You’ve got to move on, you know what I mean?” he said. “And I wish we would give more props to (host) Mikey (Madison) because she had a great show, and I think we would like to echo that a little more.”
Madison, who recently won an Oscar for her starring role in “Anora,” made her “SNL” hosting debut the night Wallen appeared as the musical guest.
Thompson also shared his thoughts on Wallen’s abrupt exit in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly.
“I don’t know what goes through people’s minds when they decide to do stuff like that. I don’t know if he understood the assignment or not, or if he was really feeling a certain kind of way,” he said.
“You see somebody before you get a chance to say hi or say good job or anything like that, they just dipping,” he also said. “I thought maybe he had to go to the potty or something.”
He added that Wallen’s unexpected departure was “a spike in the norm.”
“We’re so used to everybody just turning around and high-fiving us, everybody’s saying, ‘Good job, good job, good job.’ So when there’s a departure from that, it’s like, hmm, I wonder what that’s about?”
“SNL” poked fun at Wallen’s quick exit during this weekend’s episode.
During the “Weekend Update” segment on April 5, co-host Colin Jost dropped a reference to Wallen while discussing the recent upheaval in the stock market.
“Just in the past two days, investors have lost over $6 trillion,” he said. “Money is leaving the stock market faster than Morgan Wallen at goodnights.”
Wallen’s appearance on “SNL” came after another controversy involving the country star and the show several years ago.
He had been scheduled to appear as the musical guest in October 2020, but was pulled from the show’s lineup after videos surfaced of him partying without a mask during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Wallen was later rebooked on the show and appeared as the musical guest that December.