In the week leading up to new shows, “Saturday Night Live” performers and writers frequently pull all-nighters working on sketches. For Chris Redd, who is in his second season on the show, that kind of schedule hasn’t been too disruptive.
“I already have insomnia a little bit,” he said. “So the late hours (at ‘SNL’) weren’t throwing me off at first — but it is the hardest job I’ve had in an office setting. Also the coolest. But definitely I’ve never been a zombie in any other place but ‘SNL,’ just walking around, spitting out jokes at 3 a.m. It brings you to a good place of exhaustion, where you start getting really creative and letting go and that’s the thing I like about it the most.”
Redd was a rapper earlier in his career and frequently there’s a musical element to his comedy on the show. A sketch that stands out as one of his favorites is the R&B song “Come Back, Barack” in 2017. Another is the music video for “Trees” — literally an ode to trees — from earlier this season.
“I had a lot of fun making ‘Trees’ because it’s such a silly idea and we wrote it over the summer when we were off last year. I had just gotten down how to work (on the ‘SNL’ schedule) and I wasn’t ready to stop, so I went in and wrote eight songs and ‘Trees’ was one of them. You really learn about timing and stuff; it’s pretty impossible to pre-write for that show, but when it works it’s cool and a climate change report had just come out and everything lined up in that week for that song.”
“SNL” is a high point of Redd’s career so far. When asked to share a worst moment, he said: “All right, this is one of the most awkward moments in my entire life in this business.”
My worst moment …
“This was probably 10 years ago, I signed up for a comedy competition in Chicago. It was at this lounge and I forgot the name of it. We used to do shows there all the time, it was in the West Loop and it was a restaurant as well. So they were having this comedy show. Lil Rel Howery was one of the judges.
“Now this is just when I left rap and I had been doing some comedy, but it was really confusing to a lot of people why I was doing comedy. All they knew me for was rapping and kind of being mad all the time.
“So this was the first time all my people from my past life came to this new life, to see what the hell was going on. Everybody was there. My old pastors came. Their family. My family. Teachers. I had managed models for a little bit — I don’t know how I fell into that, we don’t even have time to get into that — but they came. Just random people from my life and my past came to this show. I sent a mass email like: ‘This is the grand opening of my comedy!’ Because everybody was doubting me. (Laughs.) Nobody thought I could do this. I was confident because in my improv class I was killing and I’d had a few good stand-up shows.
“At that point in stand-up, I was still writing my bits and then going word-for-word. I was not good at this yet. But I was so ready. And so nervous. So I got up on stage and I had this joke called (laughs) ‘The Pimp Magician.’ That was the joke. But I didn’t even get to that. My opening was, ‘I just bought this shirt’ — because I had just bought that shirt — ‘and I told myself, if I don’t win this competition, Imma take this (shirt) back because I kept the tag on.’ That was my opening line, OK? Now, I don’t know why, but I thought it was hilarious.
“Actually, before I even got to that, I started by mumbling some things because I got real nervous and I was making some quips and they were not working (laughs). So I get to my line about my shirt and then one person in the back was like, ‘Take that (shirt) back, bro!’ And he got the biggest laugh of my whole set (laughs)!
“I never died a death so slow — that five-minute set felt like an hour-and-a-half.
“And it wasn’t a regular bomb, because now you have to hear people remind you how bad your bombing was because they’re the judges. So (the emcee) is like: ‘OK, uh, so: What did y’all think of his set?’ And one of the judges was like, ‘Well, we all heard no laughs so do I gotta really say something?’ (Laughs)
“And everybody from my past was like, ‘Oh, you made a bad decision to do this!’ They were coming up to me like, ‘Woo, that was something, man. That was really something. You sure you done rapping?’ Everybody was asking me was I sure I was done rapping — and people that didn’t even like my rapping were asking that!
“I will never forget someone bringing up my mixtape and just trying to convince me on the spot that I should leave comedy and go back to rapping. And they had never been to a rap concert of mine, but they just knew this was better than whatever they just saw!”
“It hurt so bad.”
Was Redd surprised that even his friends and family weren’t offering a few pity laughs?
“No, I was not surprised! (Laughs) It’s been an uphill battle for my dream my whole life, you know what I mean? I wasn’t surprised at all that somebody wasn’t like, ‘Let him talk!’ Like, come on, somebody support me! Everybody was just sitting there like, ‘He shoulda went back to school, why didn’t he go back to school and find a real job?’ That was the kind of vibe that I got.
“I was just bad — I didn’t know how to do stand-up yet. And I didn’t really know how to be honest. I was just creating a character that’s funny to me and putting some stuff on it, instead of being an honest person (on stage). What I do now is, I discover why I think an idea is funny to begin with and where that stems from. And that’s the actual truth of it. But I didn’t know how to do that yet, which is fine — but not in a comedy competition! It was the wrong time to do this! I was doing open mic material when there were people there who were ready.
“I just remember meeting with Lil Rel afterwards and I bombed so bad he was mad (laughs) and rightfully so! It was all bad!
“Later that night, I went to an open mic at the Playground Theater and I remember that set like it was yesterday. I did go home and scream to a pillow (first). But I didn’t have enough money to do anything else and open mics are free and super close. And comedy just lends itself to people with little money and nothing to do and a whole lotta (stuff) to say.
“And I couldn’t just give up, you know?
“I felt like (crap) and started to try to do (laughs) the pimp magician joke and then I was like: ‘You know what? I don’t even know what … I’m talking about,’ and I basically started talking about about how bad I bombed earlier that night — and I killed! And I was like, this is it. That’s when I learned what I was supposed to be doing. It was like, oooooh, this is what stand-up is. Got it.
“It was the moment that changed my perspective and the moment I got instantly better.
“And it’s not like I never bombed again, that’s ridiculous. But I got instantly better at comedy because of that moment. But that moment hurt and I will never forget it (laughs).
“I’m really hard on myself about sticking to plans and seeing things through. I gave myself three years and I said no matter what happens in those three years, I’m not going to stop comedy until I figure out if this is for me. I put my all into it. I did a lot of research about people’s come-up stories, and I always remember Dave Chappelle talking about the one moment where you bomb so hard, you know that it’s never going to feel that bad again. And that was my moment. I had thought I’d had it before, but it was like, nah (laughs) — I needed my pastor to be there, I needed my parents’ friends to be there, I needed ex-girlfriends to be there. I needed to really feel it.”
The takeaway …
“Because of that, coming to ‘SNL’ — I’m kind of fearless when it comes to the comedy thing. I always have to have a level of honesty when I’m on stage no matter what I’m doing. Honesty in the sketch or the character, honesty in the moment, and fully committing to it.
“I’m not going to say that the stuff that I wrote wasn’t funny at all, I just know I bailed on myself in that moment because I was so scared and I was feeling so bad because I was bombing. Now I’ve bombed so much that I’m never scared to commit or dive in. If I start from a real place, I can count on myself to bring it home.
“I still feel like I’m learning a lot at ‘SNL.’ Like, learning how to deal with people just hitting you up whenever, just walking up to you and talking about how they don’t like something.
“I’ve never had people be that invested. Like, when I was working at McDonald’s and I dropped fries or they didn’t come out right, I didn’t have people coming up and saying, ‘Those are mediocre fries, man! You need to make fries better!’ So you have to get used to that. But at the same time, it comes with the job. And there are a lot more positives.”
nmetz@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @Nina_Metz
