Whatever Morgan Wallen’s issue with “Saturday Night Live” might be, it started well before the cast tried to close out his appearance last Saturday.
Variety reports that the country superstar balked at a chance to star in a sketch alongside Bowen Yang and host Mikey Madison. Joe Jonas replaced Wallen in the sketch “Big Dumb Line,” a musical number written with the “I’m the Problem” singer in mind.
Wallen made an abrupt exit at the end of the episode, whispering something to host Mikey Madison before storming off the stage. Wallen’s team told the trade magazine that he had no issues with “SNL” and enjoyed his time on the program. However, an Instagram post later in the evening showed that Wallen was itching to be out of New York City as quickly as possible.
“Get me to God’s country,” he wrote over a photo of his private jet.
Long-time “SNL” castmember Kenan Thompson called Wallen’s exit stage center a “spike in the norm.”
“I don’t know what goes through people’s minds when they decide to do stuff like that,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “I don’t know if he understood the assignment or not, or if he was really feeling a certain kind of way,”
Thompson took offense to the “God’s country” crack, saying that Wallen’s attitude toward New York was “not necessarily my favorite.”
“The ‘God’s country’ of it all is strange because it’s like, what are you trying to say? You trying to say that we are not in God’s country?” he said. “We’re not all under God’s umbrella?”
Thompson, who has worked on “SNL” for 22 seasons, said that Wallen is not the only musical guest to make a quick exit.
“Prince did the same thing,” he said, “I’m not saying Morgan Wallen is Prince, but we weren’t surprised because Prince was notoriously kind of standoffish. It’s just how he was.”
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