Morgan Wallen’s abrupt exit from Saturday Night Live this weekend sparked controversy, and the country star has found a way to cash in.
The 31-year-old quickly walked off the stage as the credits began to roll at the end of Saturday night’s show, 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.”
The phrase has since gone viral, and Wallen is now selling hats and T-shirts bearing the same phrase from his online merchandise store.
Earlier this week, SNL star Kenan Thompson shared his confusion over Wallen’s hasty departure.
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.”
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.
It has also been reported that Wallen turned down the offer to appear in a musical sketch, and was subsequently replaced by Joe Jonas.
