Christopher Jerell Redd (born March 25, 1985) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, rapper, and singer. Redd was a cast member on the

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

sketch comedy Sketch comedy comprises a series of short, amusing scenes or vignettes, called "sketches", commonly between one and ten minutes long, performed by a group of comic actors or comedians. The form developed and became popular in vaudeville, and ...

series ''

Saturday Night Live ''Saturday Night Live'' (often abbreviated to ''SNL'') is an American late-night live television sketch comedy and variety show created by Lorne Michaels and developed by Dick Ebersol that airs on NBC and Peacock. Michaels currently serves ...

'' from 2017 to 2022. For his work on the show, he won a

Primetime Emmy Award The Primetime Emmy Awards, or Primetime Emmys, are part of the extensive range of Emmy Awards for artistic and technical merit for the American television industry. Bestowed by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS), the Primetime ...

for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics in 2018 for co-writing the ''SNL'' song "Come Back Barack". He is also known for his roles in '' Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping'' (2016), '' Disjointed'' (2017–2018), and ''

Kenan Kenan (also spelled Qenan, Kaynan or Cainan) (; ar, كِنَاْنْ, Keynān; grc-x-biblical, Καϊνάμ, Kaïnám) is an Antediluvian patriarch first mentioned in the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible. In scriptures According to Gen ...

'' (2021–2022).

Early life

Redd was born on March 25, 1985, in St. Louis, Missouri, and moved to Naperville, a suburb of

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

, at the age of eight. According to Redd, he had a childhood

stutter Stuttering, also known as stammering, is a speech disorder in which the flow of speech is disrupted by involuntary repetitions and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words, or phrases as well as involuntary silent pauses or blocks in which the ...

that he overcame by learning how to rap. He attended Naperville schools, including Gregory Middle School and

Neuqua Valley High School Neuqua Valley High School (NVHS) is a public four-year high school located near the corner of Illinois Route 59 and 95th Street in Naperville, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago, Illinois, in the United States. Neuqua Valley is the counterpar ...

, and later attended community college in

Elgin, Illinois Elgin ( ) is a city in Cook and Kane counties in the northern part of the U.S. state of Illinois. Elgin is located northwest of Chicago, along the Fox River. As of the 2020 Census, the city had a population of 114,797, the seventh-larg ...

, where he took his first

improvisational theater Improvisational theatre, often called improvisation or improv, is the form of theatre, often comedy, in which most or all of what is performed is unplanned or unscripted: created spontaneously by the performers. In its purest form, the dialogue, a ...

class.

Career

Redd briefly pursued a career as a rapper, but switched to

after realizing that he enjoyed improvisational comedy. He took comedy classes at Jokes & Notes, a now-closed comedy club in Chicago. Redd joined the comedy group

The Second City The Second City is an improvisational comedy enterprise and is the oldest ongoing improvisational theater troupe to be continually based in Chicago, with training programs and live theatres in Toronto and Los Angeles. The Second City Theatre o ...

, and was a member of its touring company. He moved to

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...

in 2016 to further pursue an acting career, and made his film debut as Hunter the Hungry, an underground rapper, in the 2016

mockumentary A mockumentary (a blend of ''mock'' and ''documentary''), fake documentary or docu-comedy is a type of film or television show depicting fictional events but presented as a documentary. These productions are often used to analyze or comment on c ...

'' Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping''. Redd co-starred in the 2017–2018

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a ...

comedy series '' Disjointed'', in which he played the role of Dank, a stoner. After a previous unsuccessful audition for ''

'', it was announced in September 2017 that Redd had joined the show's cast as a featured player for season 43, alongside fellow newcomers

Heidi Gardner Heidi Lynn Gardner (born July 27, 1983) is an American actress, comedian, and writer. She has been a cast member on ''Saturday Night Live'' since 2017, beginning in season 43. Early life Gardner was born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. Sh ...

and

Luke Null Lucas Elliot Null (born July 7, 1990) is an American actor, comedian, singer, and musician. Null is best known for his brief tenure as a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy series ''Saturday Night Live ''Saturday Night Live'' (often abbrevi ...

. In 2018, Redd won a

for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics for writing the song "Come Back Barack", which lamented former president

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, Obama was the first Af ...

's departure from the

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in ...

and aired during

Chance the Rapper Chancelor Johnathan Bennett (born April 16, 1993), known professionally as Chance the Rapper, is an American rapper, singer-songwriter, and record producer. Born and raised in Chicago, Bennett released his debut mixtape ''10 Day'' in 2012. He ...

's episode on November 18, 2017. The award was shared with co-writers

Kenan Thompson Kenan Thompson (; born May 10, 1978) is an American actor and comedian. He has been a cast member of the NBC sketch comedy series ''Saturday Night Live'' since 2003, making him the longest-tenured cast member in the show's history. He was also t ...

and Will Stephen, and composer Eli Brueggemann. Redd and Gardner were promoted to repertory status in 2019, ahead of ''SNL''s 45th season. His celebrity impressions on the show included U.S. Senator

Cory Booker Cory Anthony Booker (born April 27, 1969) is an American politician and attorney who has served as the junior United States senator from New Jersey since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, Booker is the first African-American U.S. se ...

Kanye West Ye ( ; born Kanye Omari West ; June 8, 1977) is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, and fashion designer. Born in Atlanta and raised in Chicago, West gained recognition as a producer for Roc-A-Fella Records in the ea ...

Sterling K. Brown Sterling Kelby Brown (born April 5, 1976) is an American actor. He has portrayed Christopher Darden in the FX limited series '' The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story'' (2016) and stars as Randall Pearson in the NBC drama series '' ...

, and Mayor

Eric Adams Eric Leroy Adams (born September 1, 1960) is an American politician and retired police captain serving as the 110th mayor of New York City since January 1, 2022. Adams was an officer in the New York City Transit Police and then the New York ...

. Redd left ''SNL'' in 2022, after the show's 47th season. Redd's debut stand-up comedy album, ''But Here We Are'', was released by

Comedy Central Records Comedy Central Records is a record label based in New York and owned by Paramount Global. The label specializes in stand-up comedy albums and is distributed by Alternative Distribution Alliance, a subsidiary of Warner Music Group. The label has r ...

in March 2019. Between 2021 and 2022, Redd co-starred in the comedy television series ''

'', alongside his ''SNL'' castmate Kenan Thompson. Their ongoing roles in both shows resulted in frequent travel between New York City, where ''SNL'' is filmed, and Los Angeles, where ''Kenan'' was filmed. Redd is slated to appear in the upcoming film ''

Spinning Gold ''Spinning Gold'' is an upcoming American biographical drama film written and directed by Timothy Scott Bogart. It is based on the life of his father, Casablanca Records founder Neil Bogart. The film is scheduled to be released in theaters on Ma ...

'' as

Frankie Crocker Frankie "Hollywood" Crocker (December 18, 1937 – October 21, 2000) was an American disc jockey who helped grow WBLS, the black music radio station in New York. Early soul radio According to popeducation.org, Crocker began his career in Buffal ...

, a

disc jockey A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at a nightclub or music festival), mobil ...

for the first black music radio station in New York. Other recent projects include the

Lorne Michaels Lorne Michaels (born Lorne David Lipowitz; November 17, 1944) is a Canadian-American producer, screenwriter, and comedian. He is best known for creating and producing ''Saturday Night Live'' (1975–1980, 1985–present) and producing the '' La ...

–produced comedy series '' Bust Down'', in which Redd plays a discontented casino employee, and a stand-up comedy special on

HBO Max HBO Max is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched in the United States on May 27, 2020, the service is built around the libraries of HBO, Warner Bros., Cartoon Ne ...

Personal life

In October 2022, Redd was assaulted by an unknown assailant outside of a comedy club in New York. He was then taken to the hospital, and later released.

Other activities

In June 2020, Redd and fellow The Second City alumna Lisa Beasley raised over $360,000 on

GoFundMe GoFundMe is an American for-profit crowdfunding platform that allows people to raise money for events ranging from life events such as celebrations and graduations to challenging circumstances like accidents and illnesses. From 2010 to the be ...

to cover the medical costs of racial justice protestors who had contracted

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease quick ...

. After Second City CEO Andrew Alexander resigned during the same month over allegations of institutional racism within the group, Redd and 18 other black alumni and current employees signed an open letter calling for an independent investigation into the allegations.

Filmography

Film

Television

Discography

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Redd, Chris 1985 births 21st-century American comedians 21st-century American male actors African-American male actors African-American male comedians American male comedians American impressionists (entertainers) American male film actors American male television actors American male voice actors American sketch comedians American stand-up comedians Comedians from Illinois Comedians from Missouri Living people Male actors from Naperville, Illinois Male actors from St. Louis Primetime Emmy Award winners 21st-century African-American people 20th-century African-American people