Damon Wayans said in a recent episode of the “SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night” docuseries that he sabotaged his stint on “Saturday Night Live” in frustration over the sketch roles he was being offered. (Watch the video below.)
The matter came to a boil when Wayans went rogue during a sketch called “Mr. Monopoly” in 1986. Wayans played his cop character as an effeminate gay cliche, which was not what was rehearsed.
“I snapped. I just did not care. I purposefully did that because I wanted [Lorne Michaels] to fire me,” he said, per Deadline on Thursday.
Entertainment Weekly reported that Griffin Dunne, who appeared in the skit, said of the off-script stunt, “I thought it was weird, but people still laughed.”
Michaels said he canned him midseason because “it had to be done,” EW noted.
Before his unauthorized improv, Wayans said in the doc he was warned by “SNL” great Eddie Murphy that as a Black man he would be pigeonholed into certain characters, so he’d better write his own, Deadline reported.
But his attempts were rejected and he was given parts that would embarrass him in front of his mother, he said.
The hard feelings didn’t last forever. Wayans was invited back to do standup in the 1985-86 season finale and returned as a guest host in 1995.
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“Lorne is a very forgiving man and I think he just wanted to let me know that he believed in me,” Wayans added, per the Independent.
Wayans of course went on to star in the groundbreaking sketch series “In Living Color.” He now has a new sitcom on CBS called “Poppa’s House.”