Country music star Morgan Wallen posted a video to his Instagram account this afternoon, announcing that he’ll no longer be serving as musical guest on this weekend’s installment of Saturday Night Live. According to Wallen, he got a call from the show earlier today, informing him that, due to COVID-19 protocols, he’s been removed from the episode’s line-up.
Wallen assured his fans that he hasn’t tested positive for COVID, but acknowledge that his decision to party, maskless, in a crowded bar and house this past weekend—as recorded on a number of TikTok videos in the aftermath of an Alabama football game—has led to him losing the gig. “My actions from this past weekend were pretty short-sighted, and have obviously affected my long-term goals and my dreams,” he states, while also noting that Lorne Michaels gave him “a lot of encouragement”—unprecedented!—and promised him that the show would “find another time to make this up.”
SNL returned to the studio proper for the first time last weekend, assuring both viewers and cast members alike that it would be following firm quarantine protocols to ensure that the live series could be filmed with the utmost of safety. This cancellation is, obviously, the most drastic consequence of those policies to date; there’s no word yet on who, if anyone, the show will bring in to replace Wallen, who came to prominence with an appearance on The Voice in 2014, which he parlayed into a platinum-selling album, If I Know Me, in 2018.