Kel Mitchell was happy to drop everything and do that Emmys cameo for Kenan Thompson

It seems like they're still friends in real life, which is all we've ever wanted

By Sam Barsanti  |  September 14, 2022 | 1:13am
Aux News Kenan Thompson
Kel Mitchell was happy to drop everything and do that Emmys cameo for Kenan Thompson
Kenan Thompson, Kel Mitchell Photo: Kevin Winter

Though the show itself was largely a snooze (if “they gave out awards and nothing mind-meltingly stupid happened” is boring to you), one highlight of the 2022 Emmy Awards was a blink-and-miss-it cameo from Kel Mitchell—the old Nickelodeon comedy partner of Emmys host Kenan Thompson. It came in a completely unrelated skit that Thompson was doing with “honorary bartender” Kumail Nanjiani, during which Nanjiani fumbled with bottles and lamented the fact that “honorary bartender” was a job and not just a title. When Thompson tried to help out by taking orders from some of the celebrities sitting around the bar, Mitchell turned around and asked for “a Good Burger.” It was incredible. (Ask your… older millennial friends?)

Now, we would’ve loved to see the Emmys completely grind to a halt for some extended Good Burger riffs or the classic Kenan And Kel setup where Kel gets into some kind of scrape and Kenan comes up with an overly complicated scheme to get him out of it (Awwwww, here it goes!), but that was really the whole extent of the cameo. Mitchell showed up at the end of a sketch, he referenced an old Nickelodeon thing (plus a movie that’s a 10/10 on the wackadoo scale), he and Thompson hugged each other, and then ‘90s kids went nuts.

And it sounds like it wasn’t especially hard—at all—to convince Mitchell to do it. Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter at the Governors Ball post-Emmys, Mitchell explained that Thompson and the producers for the Emmys met up with him when he was in New York promoting his new children’s book Prank Day, and he “jumped at the chance” to do the skit with his old ALl That buddy. Mitchell told THR that they even took precautions to keep him hidden when he arrived for the show, telling him not to walk the red carpet or anything to maintain the surprise, and he was still on board.

It was all worth it, because seeing Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell together is a joy. We just would’ve liked more of it. Hey, to make it up to us increasingly decrepit and mummy-like ‘90s kids, could we get more seasons of Kenan And Kel? Maybe they could do one where Kel does something that really frustrates Kenan, and he pauses for a second and then screams “WHY?!”

 
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