- Wood starred alongside Walton Goggins in season three
- Mancunian actor has received huge plaudits for her performance as Chelsea
- “It feels like in a weird way, Chelsea does get what she wants”
Kenan Thompson has revealed he has been “suffering in silence” with a serious medical condition for the last two years.
The Saturday Night Live star, who recently commented on Morgan Wallen’s infamous SNL walk-off, recently conducted an interview with People, where he explained how his health had been causing him severe problems in recent years.
Suffering in Silence
Thompson, 46, has been a mainstay on SNL for 22 years. A run that makes him the longest serving cast member in the show’s illustrious history. However, the last couple of years have been particularly challenging for the comedian, who opened up about his health problems.
“I noticed that I would get hoarse a lot easier when I’m doing the show. Losing my voice quicker, but also uncomfortable sleepless nights because I’m burping up acid, just kind of hiccuping all night. And that can definitely add more stress to an already stressful kind of environment doing a live show like that. So all of those factors, I was like whatever, I’ll get over it. But it just started to pile up.
“I was able to take something and patch it up for the moment, but I got to a point where that didn’t work anymore. That’s when it got serious. It was a suffering-in-silence situation. I don’t know if I was necessarily embarrassed to talk to a doctor — I just didn’t know if I needed to.”
When the problems peaked in 2024, Thompson sought medical advice beyond what he could receive over the counter and was diagnosed with gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD.
Kenan Thompson is Kicking Some Acid
GERD occurs when stomach acid keeps flowing back into the esophagus and can also be known as acid reflux.
“I didn’t know there was a real medical term for it,” Thompson continued, “I felt relief pretty immediately. I’ve had good training with SNL, just trying to take the comedic approach to tougher topics and make it more palatable to discuss.”
Thompson has addressed the condition as part of a new campaign entitled GERD IS NO JOKE. In which the former Nickelodeon favourite plays a chef in a fictional TV program called Kick Some Acid Cooking Show.
“Sometimes you have to massage your way into it a little bit and just be like, ‘Alright, don’t freak out everybody, I’m doing a medication ad, but we need to do a deep dive on this.’ So if I throw a character in it, there’s some familiarity to go along with the messaging. God bless, I feel great. I’m in a much healthier kind of space with my daily lifestyle and meal decision-making and all of that good stuff. I’m in a good place.”
