Kenan Thompson Reflects on SNL's "Black Jeopardy" with Chadwick Boseman

Kenan Thompson stopped by The View to talk about his new show Kenan, but Sunny Hostin took a moment to talk about one of his best Saturday Night Live moments — the "Black Jeopardy" sketch featuring the late, great Chadwick Boseman as his Black Panther character, King T'Challa of Wakanda.

"First of all, Rest in Power to the King, man," Thompson said. "Chadwick was beyond talented. He was one of the coolest people I've met, who was in the middle of — not just career-wise — everything that he was going through that we learned about later. As I look back on those times, there was no way you could tell. He was in it, he was smiling, he was interacting with people, and he was also focused on doing karate moves even in between rehearsals. I was like 'okay, so what movie is that for?' He was just always doing stuff. Beyond talented."

"When we do a table read, we read like 50 sketches," he continued. "So that's possibly 50 different opportunities for a host to find a character, and he jumped into all of them like that, and was trying to figure out how to fit in. No, it wasn't necessarily easy for him on that 'Black Jeopardy' because we were trying to figure out exactly how to make his top Tom Hanks's, which was the pinnacle at that point. We were finding it and finding it, and he was never getting discouraged, but he just knew that it wasn't landing just right just yet or whatever, but he was never flipping out like 'why isn't this funnier, blah blah blah.' He was just like 'let's figure out what we can do to make this work and blah blah blah.' And then finally, for the live show, it all came together. So that's always when it goes the best, when we get it right for the live show." 

Here is the full "Black Jeopardy" sketch in question. 

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Andy Hunsaker has a head full of sitcom gags and nerd-genre lore, and can be followed @AndyHunsaker if you're into that sort of thing.