Travis Kelce Had Trouble with Table Read During SNL Prep: ‘I Can’t Really Read That Well’

Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce’s 2023 Saturday Night Live hosting gig seemed to come off without a hitch, but as the future Hall of Famer puts it, things didn’t go so smoothly behind the scenes.

Kelce sat down for a recent interview on the Bussin with the Boys podcast, in which he revealed that the table reads — the preparatory part before the skit, where actors read their lines while seated at the table — didn’t go well because “he can’t really read that well.”

Kelce revealed, “The table read was the hardest f*cking part.”

“The writers’ rooms were fun because you’re just getting pitched ideas,” Kelce explained. “The table reading, for a guy that can’t really read that well, it was kind of a f*cked situation.”

Kelce added, “I felt like I was just trying to get through the reading instead of actually acting it out and giving it a voice and giving it a character and things like that. I was just focused on, ‘Don’t fucking skip this line.’”

The SNL episode in which Kelce appeared aired on March 4, 2023, featuring musical act Kelsea Ballerini.

Fortunately for Kelce, after the table read, things became “much more comfortable.”

“There was still a sense of like, ‘I need to be a professional here,’” Kelce said. “I want to take advantage of this, but I want to have fun doing it, but I don’t want to look like a loser doing this. I want to make them respect my approach and how I’m like taking it serious. But it was just a fun roller coaster, man.”

Kelce’s performance came off well enough that he earned himself another TV credit on the 2024 series Grotesquerie. Additionally, he has a scheduled cameo in Adam Sandler’s Happy Gilmore 2, set to premiere on Netflix on July 25.