Maybe it was just a misunderstanding?
Last night, Morgan Wallen appeared as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live alongside host and actress Mikey Madison, and obviously his appearance was made in an effort to help promote his new album, I’m The Problem, and corresponding stadium tour.
He’s currently trending online because during SNL’s signature end of show sendoff – where the cast, host and musical guest all say goodbye to the audience and hug and chat – the country music singer gave his pleasantries to Mikey (who won the 2025 Oscar for “Best Actress” for her performance in Anora) and then Wallen walked right off the stage.
It seemed odd that they were almost completely separated from the rest of the cast and he didn’t say bye or talk to anyone else, and it was a bit of an odd exit you can watch it for yourself here:
Thank you, Mikey Madison and @MorganWallen! Goodnight! pic.twitter.com/FDlInhhHqb
— Saturday Night Live – SNL (@nbcsnl) March 30, 2025
Even in the show teasers, fans were quick to point out that Morgan looked like he wasn’t all that thrilled about being there, and he has a checkered past with the show to say the least, so maybe he didn’t want to do it… but it’s hard to pass up press like that, I guess? He definitely doesn’t need SNL, so he could’ve just said no…
Fans online had a lot to say about his exit on the show, with some agreeing they’d do the same, and some saying he’d “never” get invited back, though the funny part is, I don’t think he would care at all. Well, shortly after walking off set, Morgan was ready to catch a private plane back to Tennessee, sharing a rare non-promotional Instagram story saying:
“Get me to God’s country.”
Plenty of people read into that, too, and I’m sure he was probably ready to get out of NYC… Morgan doesn’t exactly strike me as a big city slicker:
Morgan Wallen on Instagram Stories after his #SNL performances pic.twitter.com/S89xjcgIqs
— Saturday Night Network (@thesnlnetwork) March 30, 2025
Of course, Morgan and the show have a little bit of bad blood, I guess you could call it, because when Morgan Wallen was supposed to make his SNL debut back in 2020, he was filmed partying (maskless and making out with about a dozen college girls) down in Tuscaloosa, Alabama during the peak of the COVID outbreak. That video surfaced the week before he was scheduled to be the musical guest on Saturday Night Live. The long-running sketch show gave him the boot for being irresponsible about his pre-show quarantine, and he was eventually brought back on around two months later.
That particular show actually ended up being pretty good and Morgan participated in a sketch with the cast poking fun at all of it, and it seemed to have worked out in the end, so I don’t necessarily think this new story has anything to do with what happened before… that was five years ago now.
And TMZ has apparently already spoken to a source close to Wallen about the incident, who said that Morgan meant nothing by his exit and he “entered and exited” the studio the same way he did in rehearsal and camera blocking all week. So if this is true, and producers had an issue with it, they would have certainly said something to ensure Morgan stayed on stage until the end of the credits like everyone else… or maybe he just had a plane to catch? Who knows:
“We’re told he entered and exited the studio the same way he did Saturday night during rehearsal and camera blocking all week leading up to the live show… so he routinely headed that way when he thought it was time to go.”
Morgan is obviously polarizing figure, and probably hated by the average (very liberal) SNL fan, so people will try to make something out of everything he does, which is why he tends to stay away from gigs like this and big media jobs that always seem to lead to some sort of controversy, even something as dumb as this.
You can watch his first SNL sketch here:
And his performances of “Just In Case” and “I’m the Problem” last night:
“Just In Case”
“I’m the Problem”
