‘SNL’ alum Chris Redd breaks silence on attack outside a comedy club in New York City in April 2010.
New York, NY – After a decade of hosting Saturday Night Live, Chris Redd admits he feels bad about leaving the show. But it could be worse – he could have landed in trouble off-air.
“After my show last night, I saw I was being trolled by a guy in a black hoodie and it was like, ‘Hey, I know you – Chris Redd,'” Redd says.
He is referencing one of the most famous Internet memes of all time, a clip of an episode of SNL being shared online in which Redd played a prank on the show’s producers.
“He started saying, ‘I saw this clip of you and I saw you at a show. I saw you dressed like a lady. This show’s gonna have a lady.’ And that’s when he said he knew me from that show, it was hilarious.”
“There was no love in his voice”
But the prank wasn’t what Redd’s friends were telling him on the phone at the time of his arrest.
“I had friends from high school that texted me and said they were freaking out,” Redd says. “Somebody called me from Washington D.C. and said they think I should be in jail.
“There was no love in his voice. I was like, ‘I never wanted this to happen. I’m just going to have to deal with it the only way I know how; my time is a gift, so I’m going to enjoy it. It’s a gift from God, so I’m going to take every second.'”
Redd has struggled with mental illness all of his life. In 2009, he was hospitalized for bipolar disorder, a diagnosis which he says he received from his parents.
After he left NBC’s Sunday Night Live for a time, “I was in a bad place, a bad place, a bad place, just not doing no good,” he says.
“I took some time off. I was on disability and I wasn’t doing good. My family was telling me to take some time for myself. I had depression and anxiety attacks. I stopped going to therapy. I stopped talking to my doctors. I wouldn’t talk to anyone about anything, I was just like, ‘I don’t want to be on my medication. I don’t want to do this