For American kids who are approximately 17-18, there are few things seemingly more important than walking in your high school graduation (right next to “winning the big game” and “getting a peck on the cheek from your sweetie at prom”), but sometimes something more important comes along, and sometimes that something is a small part in The Amanda Show. That’s what happened to Saturday Night Live veteran Taran Killam, who told The A.V. Club about his unusual graduation experience during an interview about his role in the revival of Spamalot.
The Amanda Show was not Killam’s first acting gig, but he does think of it as his first “professional gig” that was all about comedy, and he says he booked the job in his last few weeks of high school and almost had to turn it down so he wouldn’t miss his graduation. Luckily for him, the producers of The Amanda Show were so helpful that they agreed to hire a limousine for him to get him from filming to the ceremony, but he still had to miss rehearsal—and, according to the rules of the school at the time, that meant he still wasn’t allowed to walk at graduation. He was there… just sitting in the audience.
Killam has nothing but positive things to say about his experience on The Amanda Show, and he obviously went on to do some professional comedy stuff after it, and also walking in your high school graduation isn’t that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. So it all seems to have worked out for the best. You can see Killam pop up in this “Moody’s Point” sketch, which was a recurring parody of melodramatic teen soaps. (The Amanda Show was really weird.)