Rock’s one of the more successful “Saturday Night Live” alums and arguably the second-most high-profile Black alum other than veteran megastar Eddie Murphy. But unlike Murphy, Rock’s tenure with “SNL” was spotty — he barely made an impression during his three seasons there, often obscured by cast mates like his buddy Sandler, Mike Myers, Dana Carvey and Chris Farley. He left the show in 1993 for a brief tenure as a featured cast member on FOX’s “In Living Color” before hitting it big after “Bring the Pain” in 1996. Since then, he’s run the comedy gamut — from the requisite “buddy cop” films (movies like Lethal Weapon 4 and the bomb Bad Company) to kiddie fare (he’s provided his voice to the Madagascar films and Bee Movie); but Rock seems to be most comfortable when he’s working within his own creative space.
No one gets Chris Rock quite like Chris Rock, and he’s begun to assume more control over his cinematic persona and voice. Though I Think I Love My Wife was hardly a success, it gave Rock the ammo for his current onscreen persona: the neurotic 40-something Black male. Even in films like 2 Days In New York and What To Expect When You’re Expecting, he’s been able to fortify this second phase of his career as a sort of Woody Allen for the hip-hop generation. But it’s particularly visible in Top Five, and that’s largely because he understands his voice better than anyone else.
“I can’t say I don’t like directing. I definitely like it,” he admits. “I’m definitely better steering my own ship. But part of it is, the stuff I wanna do — we haven’t done it yet. When you’re Black, if you’re not making history, you’re not doing nothing; because there’s still history to be made. There are still things we haven’t done. We haven’t done this level of realism. We do it with dramatic movies. Denzel will do it with a drama. Can you do a ‘real’ comedy? Here it is.”
