Chris Rock and ‘SNL’ Were Never Really a Fit

Chris Rock returns to host Saturday Night Live this weekend, his fourth go-round as the show’s headliner. He's one of the show’s most successful alums, one of the greatest stand-up comics ever and part of the Adam Sandler repertory company of let’s-put-on-a-show pals. Yet, despite all that, Rock was never a great fit at SNL. 

Some of that is on Rock, and some of that relative failure is on the show itself. For Rock’s part, he understood that he didn’t possess many of the skills that make Dana Carvey, Kristen Wiig or Eddie Murphy SNL naturals. Years after he was cast,  according to oral history Live From New York, Rock asked Lorne Michaels why he got hired considering he didn’t do voices or characters, “anything particular that would help me on SNL.” Michaels replied that he believed Rock had “original thought.” Sandler says he loves Rock because “he’s got the balls to say anything he wants to.” Unfortunately, that incisive comic take on the world works much better on the stand-up stage than in goofy character sketches.

There were plenty of SNL episodes when Rock watched from the sidelines. “A lot of his stuff didn’t get on,” noted cast member Tim Meadows. “I don’t think creatively he had a good time.”

It’s impossible to ignore the racial element during Rock’s tenure. While the current SNL cast is more diverse, Meadows and Rock were added to an all-white cast in 1990. Rock believed if both Black comics had good ideas for sketches, only one was likely to get on. The writers’ room was mostly made up of white writers. “Black people I guess stopped looking for me after the second year,” Rock said. 

Rock also expressed frustration that Black comedians were experiencing a boom on other networks, including on Def Comedy Jam and In Living Color. Martin Lawrence had a big sitcom. Meanwhile, Rock was struggling to get on the air. “I was over here in this weird world, this weird Waspy world.”

The comic held no grudges, however, often noting that he hasn’t been broke a day in his life since meeting Michaels. “The things I learned there — there’d be no Chris Rock Show, I never would have had the success I had with that if I hadn’t been at SNL learning how to run a show. So it was all school to me. Everyone was a professor — Professor Al Franken, Professor Phil Hartman.”

Did Saturday Night Live do Rock wrong by not providing a better outlet for his talents? Not according to Norm Macdonald. “I always hear about how Chris Rock was underutilized,” he explained. “That’s not really true. They let you do whatever you want on that show so you can’t blame anybody. … Chris is a great stand-up comedian, a great voice. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean he’s a great sketch-comedy comedian.”