The Irrepressibly Chaotic World of Tracy Morgan, According to ‘30 Rock’s Grizz and Dot Com

From his antics as a naked Jedi to him nearly stabbing Conan O’Brien, 30 Rock’s Tracy Jordan was an uncontrollable comedic wildman, which pretty much tracked with the guy who portrayed him: Tracy Morgan. And so, when it came time to cast Tracy’s fictional entourage, 30 Rock producers turned to two guys who had firsthand experience in at least trying to control Morgan’s worst impulses. 

Kevin “Dot Com” Brown was the founder of The Uptown Comedy Club and Morgan’s first manager, while Grizz Chapman was a bouncer at a club Morgan frequented. On the show, Dot Com chimed in with deeply intellectual quotes about American history, while Grizz shared a hilariously fleeting romance with Tina Fey’s character, Liz Lemon. And although they were supposed to just orbit Jordan/Morgan’s world — and again, establish some kind of order to his chaos — they became beloved parts of the show in their own right. 

I recently caught up with Brown and Chapman to talk about their shared histories with Morgan, what makes him such a charming “asshole” and the intoxicating power of Fey and the world that she created on 30 Rock.

Both of you knew Tracy Morgan before 30 Rock, how did you meet him?

Grizz Chapman: I met Tracy in the 1990s, before SNL. I was working at this watering hole he would frequent. I was a bouncer there. Tracy was way over-the-top — a bit much for the average person that just wanted to sit there and have a drink. You got this loud, boisterous person cracking jokes and being extra with everybody. Some people don’t take a liking to that, so sometimes I had to swoop in and be the superhero and help him out. I never had to kick him out, but I did have to keep people off his ass.

Kevin “Dot Com” Brown: I was Tracy Morgan’s first manager. I used to have this comedy club in Harlem called The Uptown Comedy Club. It was where hip-hop comedy was created. All the urban comics that came through New York had to come to The Uptown Comedy Club. This little club was one of the hottest ones in the country. 

In the early 1990s, I was doing my thing, running the club, and we were starting to get TV deals and breaking into Hollywood. While I was traveling, my mother would run the club for me, and when my mother found a hot prospect, she would clean them up and introduce them to me. She found Tracy Morgan. I was in Hollywood with my squad of hot comedians, and we were doing some deals. My mother called me and she said, “Baby, I found this young man, and you gotta meet him. He’s a little rough around the edges.” 

Tracy was raw. I think he had been doing comedy for like six months. My mother raised him; she cleaned him up. She told him, “Tracy, if you want to come to the club, you gotta take all your clothes and put them in the washing machine. You can’t come in here dirty like that.”

Back then, everybody was afraid of me. I was a little mean. I didn’t smile. I didn’t interact. I didn’t laugh. I had that intimidating bouncer face that guys like me and Grizz have. But when Tracy was around, I didn’t have that face. Tracy was the funniest thing I ever saw. Even in his rawness, Tracy would rock the crowd.

Tracy and I loved each other because he loved my mother, but we weren’t friends. He loved my mother; he just tolerated me. Our relationship was: He was hilarious, he made me laugh, and when I created opportunities for him, he always killed them. 

But I have to insert, he’s an asshole. Grizz don’t like inserting that as much as I do, but I’ve got to say it on the record: Tracy Morgan is a straight-up asshole. That said, hanging with this dude, he has a spirit that you don’t see on regular human beings. If you ever get the chance to hang with him, that few hours will be more fun that you’ve had all year.

Do you want to elaborate on the asshole part?

Dot Com: If I start telling you the asshole stories, you’re gonna need more tape. Zoom is going to say, “You’ve reached your limit!” But here’s one example: While we were doing 30 Rock, his mother lived in Ohio, and she was having a problem with her house. She needed $25,000. You’re on a TV show, $25,000 is like a couple hundred dollars to normal people. So his mother and his sister are on the news ragging him because she’s about to lose her house. All of us are like, “Boy, help your mother! I don’t care what she did, help your mother!” That’s all he has to do to make this story go away, but nobody really wants to say anything because maybe it’s none of their business, maybe they’re overstepping or maybe he’ll get mad and they’ll disappear off the set. 

But I’m never that guy. That’s why I say he never really liked me, because I’m always going to tell the truth. So I say to him, “Tracy, what’s wrong with you? Give your mother that money! That’s nothing to you! You made that yesterday!” 

He did blatant asshole stuff like that. It was on principle, but it was stupid principle. That’s just the first thing that comes to mind, but I have nine other things in my mind right now that I could tell you. 

But his spirit — I’m a believer in sometimes, the things that make you special are directly attached to the things that make you horrible. If you stop drinking, if you stop taking heroin, you might lose your ability to write another hit. But his glow — his amazing God-given spirit — makes me empathetic to the fact that he can make horrible life choices. I was lucky enough to have my father in my life and my father taught me a code, but Tracy lost his father at an early age, so maybe he lost some of the grown-man lessons of life. 

I hope it comes through that I’m not being malicious. I’m just being genuine. I could be a bit of an asshole too. Let me not leave that part out.

How did each of you end up on 30 Rock?

Grizz: A lot of people think, because I knew Tracy, he just put me in positions, but I never worked with Tracy before 30 Rock. I worked hard to get 30 Rock. Back when he was coming to the club, I was a bodyguard and I wanted to do more. I talked to him about doing more and he was very supportive, but he never pushed a pin to help me at that time and we lost contact for a long time. 

Then I’m out doing my thing, doing auditions and little movie roles, and one day I got a call to do 30 Rock while I was in L.A. bodyguarding Katt Williams. I asked who was involved, and they said “Tina Fey,” but I didn’t know who she was because I wasn’t a big SNL fan. Then they said, “Alec Baldwin,” and I said “Oh, okay.” Then they said, “Tracy Morgan.” I said, “Tracy Morgan? That’s my guy!”

It was the hardest/easiest audition I ever had in my life. They asked me, “What’s your name?” “Grizz.” I signed the paper, we shook hands and that was it. Funny part was, when I was getting off the elevator, me and Dot Com were passing each other in the hallway, and I didn’t even know him. He was going upstairs, and I was coming down.

Dot Com: My story is very similar to Grizz’s. Years before I got the call for 30 Rock, Tracy and I had hit some bumps in the road, but it wasn’t like “I took his girlfriend” or “I took his money.” They were bumps because I could call him an asshole with love, and when he was becoming hot, people would try to poach him and they’d whisper in his ears to take him from me. When we ran into that moment, we bumped heads, and he went his way and I went mine.

When I got the call for 30 Rock, I was just doing a casting director a favor. I didn’t know who Tina Fey was, and they were still developing the show. But I met her, and she extended me a love and a loyalty. I had a relationship with Tracy, and everyone wanted Tracy to be comfortable. He’d had a pilot deal before and it didn’t go well, so he was hesitant to come back to TV. But when they put me and Grizz with him, it created an environment Tracy was comfortable with and it allowed him to bloom.

When did Tracy find out you two were involved?

Dot Com: We were in the restaurant shooting the pilot, sitting at this big, round table, and they said, “Tracy’s coming.” He walks in the restaurant, and he starts greeting all these people from SNL. So he’s yelling and giving everybody hugs, and from the back, he sees me and yells out, “It that Kev!? Oh! Kev!” Then he looked at them and said, “Y’all got my family here! I was nervous about doing this, and y’all got my family here!” Then he started crying like a baby. 

Grizz: It was like friends who haven’t seen each other in a long time, but no time has passed. We were all already cool. It wasn’t forced.

Dot Com: Then Tracy introduced me to Tina Fey. He said “T-Fey, meet my man Dot Com. Dot Com, meet T-Fey.” To explain “Dot Com” real quick, my regular name is Kevin Brown, but it’s a common name — there’s always a warrant out for the arrest of a guy named Kevin Brown. So, as a comedian, I had to do something to distinguish myself, and I called myself “Big Kev.” But then every guy named Kevin started calling themselves “Big Kev,” even if they were small. I had to do something extra, so I called myself “Big Kev Dot Com.”

But when Tracy introduced me to Tina, he just said, “This is my man Dot Com.” She heard the name, and she loved it. She knew she couldn’t come up with that name on her own, and she couldn’t come up with Grizz’s name on her own. You can’t make that up. He’s been spending his life cultivating the name “Grizz.” 

What do you consider each of your breakthrough moments on the show?

Grizz: I have two episodes that, for me, feel like that was when we broke through. One was Tracy saying, “Grizz, don’t wreck this boat!” That was a defining moment for me, and when we did “Midnight Train to Georgia” and we were dancing and singing. That showed so many levels of our talents — we got a chance to dance, we got a chance to sing, we got a chance to take direction and to be funny.

Dot Com: A breakthrough moment I remember was, Tracy was ill at the time — not just had a cold, he was ill. There was a scene where Liz was trying to get a bigger apartment in her building, and she’d talked about dating this fake astronaut, Mike Dexter. So I played her boyfriend, Mike Dexter, and I’m helping her try to get this apartment from her neighbor by intimidating him. But then the neighbor, who’s a cop, comes in and hits me and I go, “Oh lord!” and I do this fall. That was a moment for me. If Tracy wasn’t sick though, he would have played the part and that never would have happened.

Grizz, speaking of Tina Fey, how did you react to the romance between Liz and Grizz?

Grizz: I was scared to death! Listen, this is my boss, and I’m supposed to have my boss straddle me? Are you serious? And, no disrespect to her husband, she’s not a bad-looking woman.

Dot Com: She can get it!

Grizz: I knew that she would be on top of me, and I was scared to death because I wanted to be respectful. It turned out to be hilarious. Toward the end, it was like, “Come on Beth, let it go.” I definitely was scared to death, though. Even being in her area was…

Dot Com: She’s frightening. Let’s be honest, Tina Fey is frightening. 

Grizz: Yes, she is, but not in a bad way.

Dot Com: Not in a bad way — in a powerful way.

Grizz: She’s not malicious, she’s a beautiful person. I could call Tina today, and she still picks up my phone call.

30 Rock ended more than 10 years ago. How do you think about it now?

Dot Com: It was life-changing for me. The backstory that was created around the character of Dot Com, I turned into that guy. I really want to be the smartest guy in the room now — I’m really trying to make that happen. I wasn’t that guy before. 

There were lines I said in 30 Rock where I didn’t know what they meant — some lines that changed my life. In one episode, Jack Donaghy was trying to recruit Tracy to be the face of the Republican Party, and he told him Lincoln was a Republican. Then I said the line, “Actually, today’s Republican Party would be unrecognizable to Lincoln. He fought a war to preserve federal authority over the states. That’s not exactly small government.” Then Jack says, “Dot Com, this need you have to be the smartest guy in the room is off-putting.”

When I said that line, I didn’t know what I was talking about, so I went to college, I got my Bachelor’s in Black Studies, I got my Master’s in Study of the Americas. I’m applying for a PhD program right now. I submit my application next month. I know exactly what the line means now. I know the history. The show foreshadowed what I’ve become and what I’m becoming. I don’t know how they did it. 

Grizz: It gave me a little bit more peace. I was this big, mean bodyguard when I first started on the show. When Dot and I used to go to places, I looked mean and serious, and he’d be like, “Grizz, calm down, relax. We’re at an Evian water party.” I know how to turn it on and off now, where I didn’t know how to turn it on and off before. 

It helped me bring my life down, but even more so for my son. It gave him different things to see his father in. He saw me as the bodyguard, but now he sees me as an actor. He sees me as something else than just this street bouncer guy. He took that, and he went with it. That’s what was life-changing for me — being able to show him something different.