Damon Wayans was intentionally fired from SNL
In the fourth episode of the Peacock documentary series SNL 50: Beyond Saturday NightDamon sat down to reminisce and laugh about his short time on the show. “Yes, I was fired. We’ll talk about it,” he said.
“I felt like I was born to be that Saturday Night Live. “So I wasn’t nervous about auditioning,” he said, adding that he had already worked on crafting characters like Homey D. Clown and others, who would become fan favorites in In living color.
Eddie Murphy, who recently left the show, told Damon: “Write your own sketches. Otherwise they’ll give you some black people to do, and you won’t like it.” But when Damon found his footing working on the series, he had difficulty connecting with the writers.
“Hey, give me the ball; I know what this needs,” he would tell the writers, trying to get his own work into the show. “But they’ll shoot down my ideas.”
“Everything Eddie said came true. They started writing me in their sketches,” he said of the stereotypical roles he was given. He even said that there were times when he would outright reject the roles the writers created for him. “I’m like, ‘Hell no.’ I was like, ‘Listen, my mom is going to watch this show. “I can’t do this.”
After 12 episodes of the season, he decided to rely on a different stereotype for a drawing that has now become infamous for all the wrong reasons. in “Mr. Monopoly” Damon W Randy Quaid Playing cops interrogating a suspect (played by host Griffin Dunne) and his lawyer is literally Mr. Monopoly.
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Damon did the sketch for the book during rehearsal, but took matters into his own hands by the time of the live taping and went off script. He played his character using the “effeminate gay man” stereotype. “I thought it was weird, but people still laughed,” Griffin Dunne said of the drawing.
“Then Lorne pretty much kicked him as he walked off stage,” Griffin recalls. “I broke off. I didn’t care. I did it on purpose because I wanted him to fire me,” Damon added. Lorne even said that firing Damon was “very difficult, but it had to be done.”
Although the Playtime decision could have ruined Damon’s career, it did just the opposite as he co-created and starred in the sketch series. In living color.
Damon finished by saying that he and Lorne were on good terms, and even though he was fired midway through Season 11, he was still invited back to perform stand-up at the end of that season. “Lorne is a very forgiving man. I think he just wanted to tell me he believed in me,” he said.
He watches SNL 50: Beyond Saturday Night On the peacock.