14 Actors Who Got Fired From “Saturday Night Live” (And Why)
He told WTF with Marc Maron, “The decision was, like, the culture’s changing, and I’m not a part of it. This shit is getting hip, this shit is getting Blacker, this shit is getting fucking rap-ier..Like, SNL is still a pretty white show, but back then it was…When I got hired, I was the first Black guy in, like, eight years, and Living Color was just hip…I wanted to be in an environment where I didn’t have to really translate the comedy that I wanted to do. I had these instances where they wanted me to do certain things at SNL. I was like, ‘No, I’m not doing it.'”
When Marc asked for examples, Chris said, “Whatever slave sketch or Ubangi tribesman or whatever, where, not that I thought that they were racist, I just thought that, if you’re the only Black face that’s going to be seen for an hour and a half, it just doesn’t…there’s gotta be more, or another Black person. It feels racist. It’s not racist, it just feels when that’s all you see.”
He went on to host the show four times between 1996-2024.
