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Posted in: NBC, Peacock, TV | Tagged: saturday night live, snl
SNL Alum Damon Wayans Reflects on "Snapping" in Sketch, Getting Fired
SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night: SNL alum Damon Wayans reflects on "snapping" and getting fired for going rogue during a Season 11 sketch.
Article Summary
- Damon Wayans recounts his "snapping" moment on SNL during a live sketch in Season 11, leading to his firing.
- Eddie Murphy's advice to write his own SNL sketches shaped Wayans's approach but was met with challenges.
- Wayans faced stereotypical roles, igniting tensions that culminated in going off-script in the "Mr. Monopoly" sketch.
- Lorne Michaels fired him but later invited Wayans back, showing forgiveness and belief in his talent.
It's one of those things that people can laugh about decades later, but former cast member Damon Wayans made his mark on Saturday Night Live, even if it was for right and wrong reasons. The NBC weekly late-night variety series was his second acting job in Hollywood after 1984's Beverly Hills Cop opposite SNL alum Eddie Murphy. Appearing in the Peacock docuseries SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night, Wayans reflects on his time in season 11 (1985-6) in the episode "Season 11: The Weird Year."
SNL 50: Damon Wayans on His Uphill Battle on SNL Before "Snapping"
"Yeah, I got fired. We gonna talk about it," Wayans said adding he felt he was "born to be on Saturday Night Live" and develop characters that wound up on Fox sketch variety series In Living Color three years later. He appeared in 13 episodes before getting fired in the 12th episode when Griffin Dunne hosted in the infamous "Mr. Monopoly" sketch. Prior to joining SNL for season 11, Murphy, who was a cast member from 1980-1984 before pursuing a film career, gave the young actor a pointer that served him during his run. "Eddie's advice to me was, 'Write your own sketches. Otherwise, they're gonna give you some Black people shit to do, and you ain't gonna like it," he recalled.
It became an uphill battle for Wayans as Murphy's prediction came true finding several of his pitches for sketches shot down. "I'm like, 'Hell no.' I said, 'Listen, my mother's gonna watch this show. I can't do this. I won't do this,'" he said about the stereotypical roles he kept receiving. Tensions came to a head as the actor went off script during the "Mr. Monopoly" sketch that found Wayans and cast member Randy Quaid playing cops. During rehearsals, Wayans played the role as intended, but come the live performance on air, the actor decided to go off-script and play his character as an effeminate gay stereotype.
"I thought it was weird, but people still laughed. And then Lorne fired him pretty much as he walked off the stage," Dunne said. "I snapped. I just did not care. I purposefully did that because I wanted [Michaels] to fire me," Wayans added. Creator Lorne Michaels said firing Wayans was "really, really hard, but it had to be done." There were certainly no hard feelings as Michaels invited the comedian back to do a standup set in the season finale, not to mention return to host nine years later. "Lorne is a very forgiving man, and I think he just wanted to let me know that he believed in me," he said. All four episodes of SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night are available to stream on Peacock.
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