Did Chris Rock Ditch A Billionaire’s Christmas Party Because He Didn’t Want This Joke Recorded?
On Saturday night, four-time Emmy-winning comedian Chris Rock abruptly abandoned his performance at a billionaire’s holiday party mid-set. Maybe he made his escape on a rocket ship.
Rock was one of several A-list performers who made the running order of an elite event hosted by Australian businessman Colonel Anthony Joseph Pratt, chairman of the massive packaging and paper product company Pratt Industries. Rock was the second comedian to play the night after Wali Collins and the lead-in to a performance by Australian-American country music star Keith Urban, but, barely a few minutes into Rock’s routine, the influential stand-up suddenly snapped at someone or something in the audience, telling guests at the black-tie-mandatory holiday bash that he didn’t agree to his performance being recorded. Then, he split.
Don't Miss
According to New York Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams, who was in attendance at Pratt’s Christmas party, Rock’s outburst and sudden escape came just moments after he joked to the audience of billionaires, millionaires, magnates, movers and shakers, “Our new push will be outer space. We’ll put all the Mexicans on the rockets.”
According to Adams’ account of the evening, after Rock suggested that NASA (or, more likely, SpaceX) would be the government agency in charge of securing America’s southern border under the Trump administration, there was “big applause, big excitement” in the room. Then, Rock spotted a disturbance in the audience, presumably someone holding up a phone in the recording position. “Whatever he saw — or thought he saw — upset him,” Adams recalled, then uncomfortably saying of Rock, “Like he went momentarily ape and shouted something like he wasn’t supposed to be taped, videoed, reported or whatever else wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“Didn’t complain. Didn’t explain. Didn’t do one more minute,” Adams said of Rock's set. “Barreling quickly, forcefully, through people to the exit doors, he kept bitching loudly and, without a second’s hesitation, stormed out — never to return.”
Now, plenty of comedians on Rock’s level of success have a “no videos, no pictures” policy for performances both private and public, but Rock’s sudden exit and subsequent “bitching,” as Adams put it, jumps out as especially bizarre for a billionaire gig. Is it possible that Rock didn’t want anyone outside of the One-Percent-of-the-One-Percent to hear his immigration policy idea? What other jokes will comics only tell in front of the rich and powerful?
While I hardly have any sympathy for Pratt for the slightly awkward second course at his billionaire’s banquet, Rock storming out of the party without so much as a warning to the audience to put away their phones seems like a total slap in the face.