Oscar-winning actor Jamie Foxx defended Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday from complaints that he appeared in “blackface” in a Saturday Night Live sketch in 2000, saying Fallon was doing a Chris Rock impression.
“He was doing an impression of chris rock. It wasn’t black face,” Foxx commented on an instagram post by E! News. “We comedians I know it’s a tough time right now. But this one is a stretch. On a show called in living color we played every race Let this one go. We got bigger fish to fry … #changecourse”.
Video of Fallon’s appearance in the sketch, “Regis co-host auditions,” was posted on social media earlier this week. By Tuesday morning, the hashtag #jimmyfallonisoverparty began trending on Twitter.
Fallon later apologized: “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,” he wrote on Twitter.
“I am very sorry for making this unquestionably offensive decision and thank all of you for holding me accountable.”
However, Foxx noted that Fallon had been impersonating Chris Rock, not mocking black people in general.
Several of Foxx’s castmates from In Living Color were involved in the 2004 film White Chicks, which told the story of black FBI agents going undercover as white women.
Comedian and Saturday Night Live alumnus Eddie Murphy also famously played an elderly white Jew (among several other roles) in his hit comedy Coming to America.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, is available for pre-order. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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