Darrell Hammond was one of my favorite Saturday Night Live cast members of all time. His impressions, more often than not, were completely spot-on and eerily awesome. My favorite is still his version of Bill Clinton, although I do have affection for his Al Gore (and his Dick Cheney was just disturbing, like the real Dick Cheney). Over the years, I’ve seen Hammond interviewed on various TV shows, and I always liked how game he was to do some of his most celebrated impressions, and how he always seemed like a solid, funny dude. Well, as it turns out, Hammond was not so solid. He’s written a memoir called God, If You‘re Not Up There, I‘m F*cked, and he details his years of alcohol and cocaine abuse:
“Saturday Night Live” comic Darrell Hammond — famed for his spot-on impressions of Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Dick Cheney — reveals in a new book how he drank and did cocaine while with the show and was once taken from NBC “in a straitjacket.”
To escape memories of a traumatic childhood, Hammond heavily indulged in alcohol and drugs as he rose to fame on the show, where he worked with guests Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, Mick Jagger and Sting.
“I kept a pint of Remy in my desk at work,” Hammond recalls in “God, If You’re Not Up There, I’m F*cked,” out Nov. 8 from HarperCollins. “The drinking calmed my nerves and quieted the disturbing images that sprang into my head … when drinking didn’t work, I cut myself.”
In 1998, cops took Hammond from the NBC infirmary to New York Hospital in a straitjacket. “My wife came but I didn’t recognize her,” he writes.
In 2002, Hammond recalls, “I’d started adding an obscene amount of cocaine to my binges … I had to be creative about how I did it without other people catching on or letting it interfere with the work. At least too much.”
In 2009, during his 14th “SNL” season, and having gone to rehab once, Hammond relapsed. “I had the brilliant idea I should try crack,” he writes — and he spent time in a Harlem crack house.
After months of treatment, Hammond broke free of drugs and earned raves doing the one-man play “Tru” in Sag Harbor this summer. But a car crash cut the show short. A lawsuit is pending over the accident, and Hammond, who wasn’t able to stand at first, has begun getting back on stage. He’s also working with Will Ferrell’s “Funny or Die” Web site.
Copies of Hammond’s new book were sent over to “SNL” Thursday, and he’s waiting for reaction. “I don’t have anything bad to say about anyone there,” he told us. “They all really went above and beyond the call for me.”
[From Page Six]
Yeah, it doesn’t sound like he blaming anyone else for his problems, although… damn, that must have been a crazy time. Tina Fey became the head writer for SNL in 2000, I believe, so she was his de facto boss (along with Lorne Michaels) during The Cocaine Years. I have to wonder if Lorne and Tina had any idea that it was this bad. I have to wonder if he was just able to “maintain” really well.
Does anyone else like any story that begins, “I kept a pint of Remy in my desk at work…”? I know he’s talking about his alcoholism and that’s horrible and everything, but at least he was drinking the good stuff. At least when he started.
Oh, and he was a cutter? Damn. Well, I’m glad he got help.
Does anyone else think he looks like James Spader? The version of Spader currently, not vintage Spader. They could be brothers.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
He’s such a talent and it’s sad to learn of his struggles. Honestly, I always suspected he was dealing with some dark stuff but he never let it be known by his public behavior. Something in his eyes gave it away though. Hopefully, he maintains and continues to do well.
When I first saw his pic, my first thought was that this was a story about Spader! Wow!
Holy cow, you are dead on, Kaiser. He looks a great deal like Jimmy Spader, for sure. And that is a compliment in the utmost terms!! 🙂
Cocaine is very, very common at SNL especially at the after parties. I think that’s why Darrell clarifies that he was using an obscene amount.
It’s one of those drugs where it can be hard to differentiate from the people who do a line at a party to the have to use every day people.
I find it refreshing how open he’s being; cutting is hard for people to admit to.
He’s brilliant. So glad to learn he’s in recovery. And he DOES look so much like current Spader, whom I still find kinda sexy, despite the aging bloat. I think my brain is hardwired to be stimulated when I hear his voice. All those ’80s movies aren’t quickly forgotten, apparently.
my fav impression of his was as sean connery [for the will ferrell as alex trebeck jeopardy skits]
sad to hear about his struggles but it sounds like this is very common among comedians…
How odd (and refreshing) to know that not just young women are admitted cutters. As a recovering cutter myself, news like this makes me feel much less alone.
It’s usually the most talented among us who seem to have the darkest demons. I don’t watch SNL that much but he has always been one of my favorite castmembers because of his dead on impressions.
I met him in NYC and he was such a sweetheart.. wish him well:)
Good for him for sobering up.
Lockbox. Lockbox.
🙂
Yeah, I’m getting the James Spader comparison. Never noticed that till it was brought up here.
And YES…so refreshing to hear someone who’s cleaned up discuss their past so candidly…and WITHOUT BLAME…for sure!
It’s all about personal responsibility. We can all point fingers, but in the end, it’s up to ourselves, isn’t it?
Good for Darrell & keep it up!
Edit: @Amy…very good point.
Welcome to SNL. It’s sad about that show, they say the schedules and rejection stress push them towards coke. The episodes frequently reveal that, yes, this is what a cadre of junkies produced. Even if I were good at anything, I don’t know if the history is more amazing than it is terrifying. An institution with a ‘Curse’ of its own, huh?
@Turd: I was there, and not for a short time. Traumatic/abusive settings and then-undiagnosed bipolar disorder, straight out of a textbook, right? Strange how we can behave as though the only way to mitigate our distress is to inflict more of it in some kind of self-soothing/hating/control measure. It’s really difficult to understand why people go down that track for the uninitiated. The manifestation is largely just symptomatic, so why not an eating disorder to make you trim, or something you can snort or inject to make you feel something (else)? I don’t know if there’s any more fully-realized answer than the idea, the opportunity, no need for outside resources to manage your pain and, snap. You’re in.
There is seemingly no benefit at to cutting. Most of the scars aren’t visible now, but one is, and every day when I have to massage it, after I cringe for that nanosecond, I think, ‘I have to be nice.’ I think that, because to look at disfigurement and to think of what state a person would have to be in to make herself that way, and the shame that surrounds that scar and how it got there just pounds me with the knowledge that many of us aren’t as safe or happy and healthy as say we are– or think we’re supposed to be the strain of putting on the play is another disaster on top. I see the scar, see what I made worse and since I stopped cutting I got a bit nicer, because the mark of my actions is there for me to see and I think, people are suffering more and less than I am, but where in that sentence does is say, ‘Thou Shalt Communicate With People As Though Their Hearts Are Pieces of Garbage’? Sometimes, if you’ve been so depressed that you thought it would kill you, you just don’t have the energy to answer for more than your fair share of crimes. It hasn’t been easy or fun trying to keep the cynicism coming out my already sort-of broken brain at bay, but I have to stick my neck out because for a fact that it makes a difference now, and when I needed some of that help and got rebuffed and punished for it over and over for years, that was stupid. And when that happens to other people it’s stupid and if it has been happening to you that was stupid, too. Look at the crap we do to ourselves, boozehound, cokehead, it’s sad. Someone should’ve just said, ‘Hey Turd, fuck it, it’s Chinatown’. Got scars? Fuck it, it’s Chinatown, move to Canada, no one will see them for months out of the year. Every year–and it’s dark! I understand your feelings of isolation surrounding that part of your past (former cutter to former cutter: it’s weird), but feeling lonely and feeling alone aren’t the same thing and my latest rant proves that you’re not alone, it proves that a thread dweller who likely doesn’t even live in the same country and you was moved enough by your words to keep your message in her heart as she wrote you a letter of fellowship to you and congratulate you on your strength in overcoming this gargantuan tribulation and asking to try to relinquish your shame about something that you did that isn’t a crime. And try to be reasonably decent to people you encounter, even if they can’t see your face. Hell, Katherine Heigl’s dance card might have had a few more entries if she’d been a tad more gracious. You don’t want that, because her hair people have no idea about how to improve her roots.
Love him in almost everything he did on SNL. The Alex Trebek – Sean Connery Jeopardy sketches are some of my fav’s as well. I got the impression he had a dark troubled side when he was in that FX(?) show where several guys had different forms of eating disorders. It was kind of a creepy role to seem him playing because it just seemed like he “got it”. I think there were some interviews around that time that alluded to some issues. He is an interesting person and I can’t wait to read the book.
I’m shocked, shocked to know that people were doing cocaine at SNL. Oh wait, SNL was born in ’75. Cocaine was its mother teat.
I’ve heard that many comedians are alcoholic and cocaine addicts who act like assholes to other comedians. This isn’t surprising in the least. It probably became part of the territory.
I didnt realise this was news. Word of his struggle with drugs and alcohol has been out there for years.
I used to have an insane crush on this man and think his stand up is brilliant. However, he was clearly quite a prick back in the day. He divourced his wife, told horrendous stories about her as part of his stand up act ALL THE TIME and then, a year or two later, remarried the same woman.
What.A. Freak.
I’ve known Darrell since childhood, and unless you were part of his inner circle, you would never have known he was drinking or about the drugs. His sister lived in the same house and had absolutely no clue what was happening to Darrell although she apparently suffered years of emotional abuse from her mother.
In high school the rest of us would be studying for hours and hours for a test – Darrell could read the material one time and knew it cold. He is THAT smart.
As for his wife – she deserves pretty much anything and everything that is said about her. Wait for the book – and the movie. It will be epic. I’ve known her from the start. Never liked her – nor did anyone else.