Jimmy Fallon Says He Was Told To “Just Stay Quiet” After His ‘SNL’ Racially Insensitive Sketch Went Viral

Published on June 3, 2020.

Broadimage / REX

On Monday, June 1, Jimmy Fallon opened up on The Tonight Show with a somber and self-reflective monologue.

The 45-year-old late-night host addressed the recent controversy surrounding a 2000 Saturday Night Live sketch in which he portrayed Chris Rock in blackface. After the clip of the performance resurfaced online in May, Fallon apologized on Twitter, going against the advice he received at the time, he now says.

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“Seeing what is going on in our country, I’m not going to have a normal show tonight — I’m going to have a different show,” Fallon began, referring to the ongoing protests against police brutality and systemic racism which was sparked over the passing of George Floyd, an unarmed African American who passed away in Minneapolis police custody.

“I’m going to start this personally, and then expand out, because that’s where we all need to start,” he continued. “With ourselves, and looking at ourselves in the mirror. And I had to really examine myself in the mirror this week, because a story came out about me on SNL, doing an impression of Chris Rock in blackface.”

The actor said he was “horrified” by what happened.

“Not at the fact that people were trying to cancel me, or cancel the show, which is scary enough, but the thing that haunted me the most was how do I say, ‘I love this person, I respect this guy more than I respect most humans, I am not a racist, I don’t feel this way,'” Fallon said. “And instead, what I kept getting advised was to just stay quiet and to not say anything. And that’s the advice because we’re all afraid.”

“I took it for a minute. I took the advice and I thought, ‘Oh God, I’m going to do this wrong. You’re right, I’m going to say something and get myself into even more trouble. I’m going to make this worse. I don’t know what to do,'” he continued. “So I thought about it, and I realized that I can’t not say, ‘I’m horrified and I’m sorry and I’m embarrassed.’ What that small gesture did for me was break my own silence, and then what I started to do is talk to some experts, some of which are here tonight and this week, and I realized that the silence is the biggest crime that white guys like me, and the rest of us, are doing.”

“We need to say something,” Fallon asserted. “We need to keep saying something. And we need to stop saying ‘That’s not okay’ more than just one day on Twitter.”

The late-night show host said he realized he “needed to get educated about how to stop the silence, and the fear of saying the wrong thing.”

“I need to be, we all need to be, talking about this,” Fallon said. “I spoke to someone incredible and brilliant who I think can help us all out in this incredibly sensitive and in-our-face subject that we need to deal with.”

Fallon then welcomed his first guest, NAACP president Derrick Johnson, noting that he wanted to become “a better ally.”

“We are all born flawed, but flawed is part of the journey that we are on so we can try to get to perfection,” Johnson said to Fallon. “If anyone can stand up and say ‘I haven’t made a mistake,’ run, because that person is clearly a liar.”

When asked on how to keep the momentum running, Johnson said, “Keeping the dialogue open, appreciating the uniqueness we all bring to the table and celebrating that uniqueness and not allowing demagogues to create otherness from people who may be different.”

“Racism is a learned behavior, and for us to unlearn a behavior we have to be honest about it and create spaces where we can talk about it,” he continued. “Most importantly, be the example we want to see. So peer-to-peer conversations, using one’s platform to promote a more positive outlook at life as it relates to other people’s uniqueness and difference becomes important.”

Fallon vowed that he would continue to work with the NAACP, and would check in with Johnson every couple of months “just to see how I’m doing and what else I can be doing to help.”

Later in The Tonight Show, Fallon welcomed CNN’s Don Lemon wh reflected on the protests and the current political climate.