Chris Rock Defends Jimmy Fallon’s Blackface Impersonation Of Him: ‘He Didn’t Mean Anything’
While talking with the New York Times, Chris Rock briefly spoke about the controversy surrounding his good friend Jimmy Fallon, who many people tried to cancel a few months ago.
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As we previously reported, in May, the clip from a 2000 episode of Saturday Night Live went viral, which showed Fallon wearing blackface for an impression of Rock. It was accompanied by the hashtag #JimmyFallonIsOverParty. Fallon eventually apologized for making the “terrible” and “unquestionably offensive” move. While many fans and celebrities defended the talk show host at the time. Still, we didn’t know how Rock really felt about it until now. In the new interview published Wednesday, Rock explains: “Hey, man, I’m friends with Jimmy,” Rock told NYT. “Jimmy’s a great guy. And he didn’t mean anything. A lot of people want to say intention doesn’t matter, but it does. And I don’t think Jimmy Fallon intended to hurt me. And he didn’t.”
Rock, 55, also discussed the incident in a recent interview with the Hollywood Reporter, dismissing the sketch as “bad comedy” and adding that Fallon “doesn’t hold a racist bone in his body.”
Fallon previously said he is dedicated to doing better:
“I realized that I can’t say I’m horrified and I’m sorry and I’m embarrassed,” Fallon said at the time. “And what that small gesture did for me was break my own silence. … Silence is the biggest crime that white guys like me, and the rest of us, are doing. We need to say something. We need to keep saying something. … We all need to be talking about this.”
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