Within the fourth episode of Peacock’s docuseries SNL 50: Past Saturday Night time, Damon sat all the way down to reminisce and snort about his brief time on the present. “Yeah I acquired fired. We gonna speak about it,” he stated.
“I felt like I used to be born to be on Saturday Night time Dwell. So I used to be not nervous for the audition,” he stated and added that he’d already labored on crafting characters like Homey D. Clown and others, who would go on to grow to be fan favorites on In Dwelling Colour.
Eddie Murphy, who’d lately departed from the present, informed Damon, “Write your personal sketches. In any other case, they’re gonna provide you with some Black folks shit to do, and also you ain’t gonna prefer it.” However as Damon discovered his footing engaged on the sequence, he had a tough time connecting with the writers.
“Hey, give me the ball; I do know what this wants,” he’d say to the writers, attempting to get his personal work on the present. “However they might shoot my concepts down.”
“Every part Eddie stated got here true. They began writing me of their sketches,” he stated of the stereotypical roles he was given. He even stated that there have been occasions when he’d straight up refuse roles that the writers had created for him. “I am like, ‘Hell no.’ I stated, ‘Pay attention, my mom’s gonna watch this present. I can not do that. I will not do that.'”
Then, 12 episodes into the season, he determined to lean into a special stereotype for a sketch that’s now notorious for all of the incorrect causes. In “Mr. Monopoly,” Damon and Randy Quaid performed cops questioning a suspect (performed by host Griffin Dunne) whose lawyer is actually Mr. Monopoly.
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Damon did the sketch by the ebook throughout gown rehearsal however took issues into his personal palms by the point of the reside taping and went off-script. He performed his character utilizing an “effeminate homosexual man” stereotype. “I assumed it was bizarre, however folks nonetheless laughed,” Griffin Dunne stated of the sketch.
“After which Lorne fired him just about as he walked off the stage,” Griffin recalled. “I snapped. I simply didn’t care. I purposefully did that as a result of I wished him to fireside me,” Damon added. Lorne even stated that firing Damon was “actually, actually onerous, but it surely needed to be carried out.”
And whereas the game-time determination may’ve destroyed Damon’s profession, it did the full reverse as he went on to co-create and star within the sketch sequence In Dwelling Colour.
Damon completed by saying that he and Lorne had been in good standing, and despite the fact that he was fired in the course of Season 11, he was nonetheless invited again to carry out stand-up in that season’s finale. “Lorne is a really forgiving man. And I believe he simply wished to let me know that he believed in me,” he stated.
Watch SNL 50: Past Saturday Night time on Peacock.