Kenan Thompson says fans mix him up with Kel Mitchell all the time

Despite cementing legend status as Saturday Night Live’s longest-serving cast member, Kenan Thompson says some fans still mix him up with his frequent ’90s costar Kel Mitchell. Not that he minds.

“I definitely get called Kel a lot,” Thompson tells Entertainment Weekly. “People just confidently call me Kel, which is fine because I know what they’re trying to say. They’re just trying to say, ‘I remember you from that show.'”

Thompson and Mitchell spent much of their formative years working together, first as teens on Nickelodeon’s All That, and then on their own spinoff, Kenan and Kel, and the movie Good Burger. Now in his 22nd season on SNL, Thompson says the confusion doesn’t bother him. In fact, he actually just goes along with it.

“Kel’s my brother, so I don’t mind pretending to be that name when people call me that,” he says. “It is just all love, man. We’ve been very lucky to do a lot of work that makes people happy. So most of the people that approach me are usually doing it out of love and excitement, which is nice.”

Thompson and Mitchell have delighted their old-school fans by reuniting several times in recent years.

First the pair did a surprise bit together at the Emmys in September 2022 in which they teased a potential Good Burger sequel. They came through on their promise the next year with Good Burger 2, which also featured their fellow All That alums Josh Server and Lori Beth Denberg.

Before the release of the sequel movie the costars also appeared together on SNL in a season 48 sketch about a gritty reboot of Kenan & Kel called Kenan & Kelly starring episode host Keke Palmer.

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The duo most recently reunited publicly to compete on an episode of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire in which they hilariously struggled to answer the very first question.

The string of recent reunions comes after the former costars patched things up following an era of no contact.

“It was more of a separation that kind of grew into the traditional terms of what a falling-out is, which is, like, not a lot of communication,” Thompson told Today last year. “Originally, it was just us kind of looking for our own individualism, basically, as adults, taking a breather from being a duo because we both came into the game as individuals.”

“Time passes and more time passes and it just became ridiculous,” he continued, saying eventually he couldn’t even remember what caused the falling-out in the first place. They finally talked things out over the telephone and “five minutes into the phone call, we were back,” he said.

Catch Thompson on SNL with host Walton Goggins this Saturday at 11:30 p.m. ET/8:30 p.m. PT on NBC and Peacock.