Update: Vulture removed the quote that this article is based on with a note about how “Robinson became certain he wasn’t in the performance” and that “Key, noting that it was a long time ago, deferred to Robinson’s memory on the matter.” So nothing to see here.
Tim Robinson screams a lot. On I Think You Should Leave, his characters — and pretty much any protagonist not played by him — gets worked up over something patently ridiculous: hot dogs, “complicated” shirts, classic cars they don’t actually own, dirty tables. It’s a schtick he’s evidently been doing since his early days. In a new profile in Vulture, Keegan-Michael Key, who was one of Robinson’s first improv teachers at the Second City Detroit, reminisces about a sketch he did where he made America’s 16th president into a real piece of work — right before he was assassinated.
In the piece, Key describes the young Robinson as “an extremely eager student, always wanted to push, always wanted to figure out a little more.” He remembers an improv sketch in which Lincoln is at the Ford’s Theatre, unwittingly awaiting his murder.
“He just played him like a completely uncouth a**hole who had never been to a theater before,” Key told Vulture. “He just went on and on being disruptive and loud, and [the comedian playing Mary Todd Lincoln] keeps going, ‘Shhh, please.’ At one point, somebody comes to say something to him, and she’s like, ‘Honey, the play!’ And he’s like, ‘This is still going on?!’” Key then made a gunshot sound, bringing the sketch to an ending as sudden as any on his hit Netflix show.
It’s not hard to imagine Robinson’s “uncouth a**hole” version of one of America’s most beloved commanders-in-chief. If he ever did in on I Think You Should Leave, it would probably go on for seven minutes of shouty terror. And it’s good to know that the Tim Robinson of today was pretty much there from the start.
You can watch the second season of I Think You Should Leave on Netflix.
(Via Vulture)
