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Posts tagged as darrell hammond

SNL

Saturday Night's Children: Darrell Hammond (1995-2009)

by | January 29th, 2013

Saturday Night Live has been home to over a hundred cast members throughout the past 37 years. In our column Saturday Night’s Children, we present the history, talent, and best sketches of one SNL cast member each week for your viewing, learning, and laughing pleasure.

Nothing fuels comedy quite like tragedy, and there's no way to do full justice to every setback longtime SNL cast member Darrell Hammond has faced in his life. Considering he holds the SNL distinctions of being the oldest hired cast member, most celebrity impersonations, final 90s-era player to leave the show, longest overall tenure, and most times saying "Live from New York, it's Saturday [...]

Memoirs

Darrell Hammond Discusses Addiction, SNL Breakdown In New Book

by | October 24th, 2011

You so rarely hear about straitjackets these days; they seem like sort of a novelty. Unless you're being escorted out of 30 Rock in one, as Darrell Hammond's new book explains. In Hammond's upcoming excellently-named memoir God, If You’re Not Up There, I’m Fucked, which comes out Nov. 8, the SNL star spent much of his late-night tenure alternating between spot-on Bill Clinton impressions and battling an addiction to alcohol, cocaine and crack, a struggle that sent him to rehab several times. “I don’t have anything bad to say about anyone there,” Darrell says about his SNL compatriots. “They all really went above and beyond the call for [...]

Reviews

Inside Darrell Hammond's Dark Days at SNL

by | November 8th, 2011

Look for Darrell Hammond at the curtain call of a Saturday Night Live show, when the cast gathers on stage to say goodbye while the band roars and the credits scrawl. Chances are you won’t find him. Often times — even for years at a stretch — he had already left the studio, departing as soon as his final sketch was over. Backstage animosity at SNL is well chronicled, but it wasn’t bitterness or spite that kept him from taking that final bow with his peers. It was that, once out of character, he felt he simply didn’t belong up there with them.

Though peculiar, this disappearing act seems [...]

Books

Darrell Hammond's SNL and Drug Abuse Memoir: God, If You're Not Up There, I'm F*cked

by | September 27th, 2011

I'll admit I'm intrigued by the cover and publisher-supplied synopsis of Darrell Hammond's upcoming book, God, If You're Not Up There, I'm F*cked: Tales of Stand-Up, Saturday Night Live, and Other Mind-Altering Mayhem: Tina Fey’s Bossypants meets David Carr’s The Night of the Gun in Darrell Hammond’s groundbreaking memoir, God, If You’re Not Up There, I’m F*cked — a raw look inside the troubled life and mind of an American comic genius. By turns poignant and hilarious, Hammond takes readers from the set of Saturday Night Live, where he was the show’s longest-tenured cast member, to the drug-ridden streets of Harlem and into the twisting corridors of his [...]

Awful Things

This Darrell Hammond Story Could Not Be More Horrifying

by | October 25th, 2011

Good god, this Darrell Hammond abuse story keeps getting worse and worse. In an interview with CNN, the SNL alum talks about suffering systematic abuse at the hands of his mother, which later led him toward addiction and self-harm. Hammond describes cutting back stage at SNL, before plowing through his personal problems to deliver solid performances. "SNL was a place where if Lorne judges that you can hit the ball over the wall that night, you're going to go out and step up to the plate," he says. "I didn't want to let Lorne down, who I was close to." Darrell also describes how difficult it was to [...]

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