Rock, Esquire s Summer cover star, sat down for a new episode of Explain This, where celebrities run down moments from their careers. When we showed Rock a picture of himself and Sandler from 2018 s
The Week Of, he launched into two incredible stories about Sandler. (Followed by a half dozen compliments.) In the first story, Rock remembered the first time he saw Sandler perform stand-up. It was at New York s legendary Comic Strip Live, where comedians like Rock and Sandler worked their way into the public eye. Rock says it took a year or two to perform at the club on a weekend night. One time, Rock took a week-long trip to Los Angeles and when he came back, here was this guy Sandler, coming out of nowhere, hamming it up on a weekend night at the club.
When Chris Rock joined the cast of
Saturday Night Live in 1990, he and fellow freshman comic Chris Farley became fast friends. Rock and Farley, along with Adam Sandler and David Spade, would go on to be referred to as The Bad Boys of
SNL, a comedy brotherhood as famous for their off-screen hijinks as their on-screen successes. Rock and the late Farley enjoyed only seven years together, but as the Esquire Summer cover star explains, Farley left a lifelong mark. Related Story
In a segment of
Explain This, Rock reminisced about the story behind an old photo of himself, Sandler, Farley, and David Spade. The photo was taken during Rock’s first big comedy tour following
That s how he ended up doing a cameo in the music video for one of the biggest songs in the world, a pop cultural phenomenon all on its own: Lil Nas X s country-rap banger Old Town Road. In the video, Rock plays an old-timey Wild Wild West sheriff in 1899. Rock tells the story in a new episode of Explain This and in Esquire s Summer cover story. Now this is a perfect example of the Forrest Gump-ness of my life. I had no idea who Lil Nas X, right? So I get asked to do this video. So I asked my daughter, Zahra, Should I do this video? She goes, What? Of course you should do this video! Rock explains in Explain This. Like, I m in the video for the biggest song ever made. I don t know how the fuck that happened, Rock says.