Days after apologizing for appearing in blackface during a Saturday Night Live sketch 20 years ago, Jimmy Fallon returned to The Tonight Show on Monday to discuss the events that led up to his statement of regret—and how his actions fit into a larger national discussion about racism.
“I’m going to start this personal and then expand out, because that’s where we all need to start: with ourselves and looking at ourselves in the mirror,” a subdued Fallon said at the start of his show. “And I had to really examine myself, 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. And I was horrified. Not of the fact that people were trying to cancel me or cancel the show, which was 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’? And instead, what I kept getting advised was to just stay quiet and not say anything. And that’s the advice because we’re all afraid. I took it for a minute, I took the advice. I thought, ‘God, I’m going to do this wrong and say something and get myself into even more trouble. I’m going to make this worse. I don’t know what to do.’ So I thought about it, and realized that I can’t not say, ‘I’m horrified and I’m sorry and I’m embarrassed.’”
The SNL sketch, which resurfaced last month, featured Fallon wearing dark makeup in an attempt to look like Rock. “I’ve seen Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and guess what? Not a lot of black folks on the show,” Fallon, who used an accent to impersonate the actor and comedian, said in the sketch. “Know why? Because black folks don’t like to answer questions. Oh, they want to be millionaires, but you got to ask their kind of question, like, ‘In 1981, how many grams of crack did Rick James smoke when he recorded ‘Super Freak’?’”
After the sketch went viral online and received a large backlash, Fallon apologized with a tweet: “In 2000, while on SNL, I made a terrible decision to do an impersonation of Chris Rock while in blackface. There is no excuse for this. I am very sorry for making this unquestionably offensive decision and thank all of you for holding me accountable.”
Fallon’s apology came just one day after George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer. In the week since footage of Floyd’s death was released, protests against police brutality have broken out in more than 140 cities around the country. While Fallon didn’t specifically cite Floyd by name in his initial segment, he did acknowledge that the larger conversations about racism happening at this moment start with people like himself speaking out.