Morgan Wallen reportedly refused to take part in a musical sketch during his appearance on last weekend’s Saturday Night Live, and was ultimately replaced by Joe Jonas.
The 31-year-old country star stirred controversy with his “abrupt” exit from Saturday’s live show.
Now Page Six reports that the sketch “Big Dumb Line,” which featured stars including Mikey Madison, Ego Nwodim, Chloe Fineman and Bowen Yang singing about their favorite things to do in New York City was written with Wallen in mind.
When he turned the sketch down, Joe Jonas was recruited to replace him.
The publication quotes an SNL insider as saying: “[Wallen] was asked but declined, so they got Joe instead.”
The insider also reported that Wallen was “not super friendly” on set, adding: “They had hopes he would do the pre-tape and perhaps more, but no joy.”
Earlier this week, SNL star Kenan Thompson shared his confusion over Wallen’s hasty departure.
As the show came to a close, Wallen quickly walked off the stage as the credits began to roll, rather than sticking around to talk to and congratulate the cast members until the broadcast ended, as most guests tend to do.
After the episode had aired, Wallen shared a photo on his Instagram Story showing a private jet on a runway, along with the caption: “Get me to God’s country.”
Thompson, 46, who is SNL’s longest serving cast member, shared his thoughts on Wallen’s behavior in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, describing the singer’s departure as “so abrupt” and “a spike in the norm.”
“I don’t know what goes through people’s minds when they decide to do stuff like that,” he told the magazine. “I don’t know if [Wallen] understood the assignment or not, or if he was really feeling a certain kind of way.”
“You see somebody before you get a chance to say ‘hi’ or say ‘good job’ or anything like that, they just dipping,” he added. “I thought maybe he had to go to the potty or something… It’s definitely a spike in the norm.”
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The comedian explained that the cast are “so used to everybody just turning around and high fiving us, everybody’s saying ‘Good job, good job, good job.’ So when there’s a departure from that, it’s like, hmm, I wonder what that’s about”.
“Seems like a complicated individual, I guess,” he continued, before adding that Prince behaved in the same manner during a past appearance on SNL.
“I’m not saying Morgan Wallen is Prince, but we weren’t surprised because Prince was notoriously kind of standoffish. It’s just how he was. So we just thought, like, ‘OK, now he’s gone back into fantasyland.’
“But Saturday I guess it was just different because it just felt so abrupt. And it was already such a small grouping on the stage anyway. So it was just like, oh wow, that was pretty visible. You know what I’m saying? It was a pretty visible thing.”
Thompson went on to address Wallen’s subsequent post on Instagram, adding that: “The ‘God’s country’ of it all is strange because it’s like, what are you trying to say?
“You trying to say that we are not in God’s country? We’re not all in God’s country? We’re not all under God’s umbrella? That’s not necessarily my favorite.”
Sources close to Wallen told Variety that there was no ill intent behind the singer’s brusque departure or his social media post, and stressed that he enjoyed his time on the show.
They also revealed that Wallen had exited the stage in the same way during rehearsals, and suggested that he might not have been thinking about the camera.
