Chris Rock does not remember his three seasons on Saturday Night Live as the point when he became one of comedy’s biggest stars. By his own assessment, he was not even one of the show’s standouts.
Speaking at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 13, Rock said he was “okay on SNL” but “not great” during his 1990-93 run. His explanation was unusually simple. “I don’t do impressions, and I was on SNL,” he said during the career panel covered by Entertainment Weekly.
Rock said the show was not “perfect for my skillset at the time,” calling those seasons a learning curve rather than the breakthrough period his later reputation might suggest.
The admission came the day after Rock premiered Misty Green at TIFF, his first feature as a director in 12 years. He is now talking about that early version of his career from a very different position, after decades of stand-up success, four returns as an SNL host and a renewed push toward writing and directing movies.
Rock Says ‘SNL’ Wasn’t Built Around His Strengths
Rock joined SNL in 1990 and remained through 1993. At the TIFF panel, he described himself plainly as “not one of the stars,” even though he believed he could compete with the other comedians around him.
The impressions were the problem. Rock’s strongest material leaned toward stand-up, commentary and characters built around his own comic voice rather than the celebrity mimicry that can give an SNL cast member a reliable place in the week’s sketches.
Rock appeared as recurring character Nat X and delivered pointed commentaries from the Weekend Update desk, including segments on politics and race. Those appearances offered more room for the kind of direct observational comedy that later became central to his stand-up career.
His ‘SNL’ Years Still Became His Version of College
In a separate Variety interview, he remembered sharing an office with Chris Farley, Adam Sandler and David Spade and said the friendships are what remain most vivid decades later.
Rock never attended college, and he now thinks of those years as the period when he otherwise would have been there. He also credits Lorne Michaels with a more concrete change in his life, joking that he met the SNL creator and “haven’t been broke a day since.”
That relationship continued well beyond Rock’s original cast run. He eventually returned to host four times and became a recurring guest, turning a tenure he now describes as an imperfect creative fit into a long association with the show.
‘Bring the Pain’ Changed What Came After ‘SNL’
Rock left the cast in 1993 without becoming the household name he wanted to be. He told the TIFF audience that New Jack City had already made him intensely famous with one audience, but not yet broadly recognizable everywhere.
The larger shift arrived with his 1996 HBO special Bring the Pain. Rock said the special changed his career, though HBO had been uncertain enough about its prospects that he was able to secure the project’s video rights.
That same year, Rock returned to Studio 8H as an SNL host. His opening monologue began by calling the show his “alma mater” and quickly moved into stand-up, the format that had become his clearest strength after leaving the cast.
‘Misty Green’ Finds Rock Moving Behind the Camera Again
Three decades later, Rock is putting more of his attention into filmmaking. Misty Green is his first feature-directing job since 2014’s Top Five, and he told Variety he increasingly likes the discipline of writing and directing without having to make acting his primary job.
The A24 film stars Rosalind Eleazar as a once-successful actress whose career has stalled and who is fighting for another chance in Hollywood. Adam Driver, Daniel Kaluuya, Anna Kendrick and Rock are also in the cast.
Rock has described this phase of his career simply, “Now I’m this director guy.” Misty Green premiered at TIFF on September 12 and is currently scheduled to open in theaters on October 9.