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Kenan Thompson nearly walked away from acting at just 15 years old after struggling to learn hockey for his role in D2: The Mighty Ducks.
Thompson, who played Russ Tyler in the 1994 sports comedy, opened up about the experience during a recent appearance on Amy Poehler's Good Hang podcast. He explained that although he had listed roller skating as one of his special skills on his resume, he had never imagined that he would need to learn hockey.
"I put it on my resume under special skills that I could roller skate, but you know, I never in a million years considered hockey," Thompson recalled.
The actor said his first day of hockey camp was particularly overwhelming because it fell on his 15th birthday.
"I wanted to learn, but after that first day of hockey camp, which was on my birthday, my 15th birthday, I wanted to quit it all," he said.
Thompson admitted that he began questioning whether acting was really for him.
"I was like, 'I don't want to be an actor. I don't want to if this is what it's about,'" he recalled.
Fortunately, his mother, Elizabeth Ann Thompson, encouraged him to keep going instead of allowing him to give up.
"Thank God my mom didn't let me quit," he said, recalling how she pushed him to return to training.
After continuing with the lessons, Thompson eventually became a skilled ice skater. His training lasted about eight weeks for D2 and continued when he returned as Russ Tyler for 1996's D3: The Mighty Ducks.
Poehler, who starred alongside Thompson on Saturday Night Live, later witnessed just how much the training had paid off. She recalled seeing him skating at Rockefeller Center after an SNL Christmas show, effortlessly moving across the ice and performing tricks.
"You are skating forward, skating backwards, skating sideways, doing a thing, shooting the moon, doing 45 million tricks," Poehler remembered.
Thompson said he takes pride in having developed the unusual skill, noting that ice skating is not something he commonly saw among people in his community growing up.
"I pride myself with that," he said. "There's only certain people that do it. There's only a few people in the NHL or whatever kind of thing... to get good at it is wild."
