Chris Redd

Christopher Jerell Redd (born March 25, 1985) is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, rapper, and singer. After several years performing stand-up comedy, Redd was hired to join the cast of the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live ahead of the show's 43rd season in 2017, making his debut alongside Heidi Gardner and Luke Null, and serving as a cast member for five seasons until 2022. For his work on the show, he won a Primetime Emmy Award 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 (2021–2022). Early life Redd was born on March 25, 1985, in St. Louis, Missouri, and moved to Naperville, a suburb of Chicago, at the age of eight. According to Redd, he had a childhood stutter that he overcame by learning how to rap. He attended Naperville schools, including Gregory Middle School and Neuqua Valley High School, and later attended community college in Elgin, Illinois, where he took his first improvisational theater class. Career Redd briefly pursued a career as a rapper, but switched to sketch comedy 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, and was a member of its touring company. He moved to Los Angeles in 2016 to further pursue an acting career, and made his film debut as Hunter the Hungry, an underground rapper, in the 2016 mockumentary Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. Redd co-starred in the 2017–2018 Netflix comedy series Disjointed, in which he played the role of Dank, a stoner. After a previous unsuccessful audition for Saturday Night Live, 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 and Luke Null. In 2018, Redd won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics for writing the song "Come Back Barack", which lamented former president Barack Obama's departure from the White House and aired during Chance the Rapper's episode on November 18, 2017. The award was shared with co-writers Kenan Thompson and Will Stephen, and composer Eli Brueggemann. Redd and Gardner were promoted to repertory status in 2019, ahead of SNLs 45th season. His celebrity impressions on the show included U.S.