Comedian Damon Wayans is reflecting on his brief tenure at Saturday Night Live (SNL) and the circumstances leading to his exit. Speaking in Peacock’s docuseries SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night, Wayans candidly shared how he went from being a cast member to being fired during Season 11 of the iconic show.
“I felt like I was born to be on Saturday Night Live,” Wayans said in the series’ fourth episode, Season 11: The Weird Year. He revealed that before joining the show, legendary comedian Eddie Murphy offered him advice. “Eddie told me, ‘Write your own sketches. Otherwise, they’re going to give you some Black people sh*t to do, and you ain’t gonna like it.’”
Tensions Behind the Scenes for Damon Wayans
Wayans admitted his frustrations grew as his ideas were often rejected. “I pitched a sketch called The Gifted Rapper, but the writer didn’t understand it,” he said. “I thought, ‘50 million other people would get this.’” Meanwhile, the show assigned him roles he found stereotypical. “They started writing me in their sketches, and I’d have to say, ‘No, I’m not doing this. My mother’s watching.’”
The breaking point came during a sketch titled Mr. Monopoly. During rehearsal, Wayans followed the script, but during the live performance, he went rogue. He played his cop character as an effeminate stereotype, diverging sharply from the original vision. “I snapped. I just did not care,” Wayans recalled. “I purposely did that because I wanted [Lorne Michaels] to fire me.”
Guest host Griffin Dunne described the moment: “I thought it was weird, but people still laughed. And then Lorne fired him pretty much as he walked off the stage.”
A Forgiving Gesture
Despite the firing, Wayans was invited back later that season to perform stand-up. “Lorne is a very forgiving man,” Wayans said. “I think he wanted to let me know he believed in me.”
Wayans would go on to create the groundbreaking sketch show In Living Color and return to SNL as a host nine years later, cementing his legacy in comedy.