Rock recently hosted “SNL,” and several current cast members, including Jay Pharoah, Michael Che and Leslie Jones, are featured in Top Five. He doesn’t want it to seem that he’s doing favors for young comics — he just knows talent when he sees it.
“I just thought they were right,” Rock says. “When you’re funny, it’s not help. When you help somebody that’s really good, you’re helping yourself, too. You’re only ‘helping’ them if they suck. Wanda Sykes is always like ‘I owe you so much.’ You don’t owe me nothing. You’re amazing. Jay Pharoah’s really funny and Mike is funny and Leslie, my God, she’s ridiculously funny. I make sure I keep tabs on people to make sure I know what people are doing.”
Rock doesn’t dismiss or downplay the importance of an established star giving a newcomer a bit of a lift. His own career would have looked very different had it not been for some titans of Black Hollywood seeing talent in the skinny kid from Brooklyn.
“Eddie Murphy put me in Beverly Hills Cop. Keenan Ivory Wayans put me in I’m Gonna Git You Sucka and Arsenio [Hall] put me on his show,” Rock recalls. “None of those things had to happen. And I definitely remember that. It wasn’t like anybody was putting me in their White show or their White movie. That wasn’t happening.”
Eddie Murphy played a pivotal role in Rock’s career beyond just that bit of casting as a valet in Beverly Hills Cop 2. Murphy helped Rock land his “SNL” audition and he gave Rock another prominent film role in 1992’s romantic comedy Boomerang. In that film, Rock played the young mail clerk Boney T, who was eager to move up in the world and emulate Murphy’s character, playboy ad exec, Marcus Graham. Reflecting on Murphy looking out for him, the ‘new Black guy’ on “Saturday Night Live,” more than two decades ago, Rock smirks when thinking about how he is now the superstar, offering a bit of a visibility boost to the youngsters on “SNL” today.
“I’m Marcus Graham now,” he says with a laugh. “I’m literally Marcus Graham now! “
Story by Stereo Williams
Images by Ali Page Goldstein
