Chris Rock recently sat down for an interview with Nicole Kidman for Variety’s ‘Actors on Actors’ series.
Among many things, Rock spoke on his experience with working with women in the comedy industry and that for him, he’s been surrounded by many powerful women since his early days, as reported by Page Six.
Rock started out by saying, “I’ve fired people because they couldn’t listen to a woman,” he added, “I was like, ‘How come he’s not doing… and then I realise, ‘Oh, it’s because a woman asked him to do it.”
He continued, “I don’t know, I have just always been around powerful women. Even in comedy, the clubs were run by women. Comedy Store was Mitzi Shore in L.A. and the most powerful [woman] in New York was Silver Friedman [the wife of Improv Club owner Budd Freidman].”
“Everybody talks about how stand-up is a boys’ club, but stand-up’s been run by a lot of women for a lot of years.”
Also in the interview, Kidman expressed to Rock that, “So many men don’t want to work with a tall woman.” Something that she’s found throughout her experience, given that she’s 5’11”. Rock replied, “I love a tall woman. Bring them on. The taller, the better.”
Earlier this year, in an interview with A Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Rock revealed that he was once in the running to play George Costanza on Seinfeld. Rock said, “There was a lot of NBC talk. There was talk about Seinfeld.”
He continued, “There was talk about me being one of the Friends at a point. Yes, I would have been the Black friend. That’s actually who I am to America anyway.”
While the role would go on to be made famous by Jason Alexander, Rock isn’t bitter at all about not receiving those roles.
“Let’s just say the good people at Seinfeld, they made the right choice,” Rock added. “[Jason Alexander’s’ good. He’s amazing.”
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Watch Nicole Kidman interview Chris Rock:
