Damon Wayans opened up about the sketch that got him fired during his brief stint on the cult TV show “Saturday Night Live.”
Best known for his role in the sitcom “My Family First” and the action series “Lethal Weapon,” Damon Wayans worked on the entertainment show “Saturday Night Live (SNL)” for several years. However, the experiment was cut short after just one year, between 1985 and 1986, due to an incident during a sketch, as he revealed in the docuseries “SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night.”
“Eddie's advice [Murphy] was, 'Write your own sketches. Otherwise, they'll give you black stuff to do, and you won't like it,'” he said. Despite this warning, all his proposals for sketches were rejected, and Damon Wayans found himself confined to stereotypical roles. “I said to myself: 'No, not at all.' I said: 'Listen, my mother is going to watch this show. I can't do that. I won't do that,'” the actor said in protest.
A return nine years later
In episode 12 of the season, the actor participated in a sketch with Randy Quaid, where they played police officers. However, during the live broadcast, Damon Wayans decided to improvise, caricaturing his role by playing the stereotype of an effeminate gay person. “I broke down. I didn't care. I did it on purpose because I wanted [Michaels] fired me,” he explained.
-SNL creator and producer Lorne Michaels admitted that the decision to fire him was “really, really difficult, but it had to be done.” However, Damon Wayans was invited back for the season finale for a stand-up routine, and he even hosted the show nine years later. “Lorne is a very forgiving man and I think he just wanted to let me know that he believed in me,” the comedian said.
After this experience, Damon Wayans found great success with other sketch shows, such as “In Living Color”, then starring in films such as “The Last Samaritan”, “Major Payne”, as well as in the series hit “My Family First”.
