28. 2004’s Chris Rock: Never Scared was nominated for two Emmys and contains his classic “marriage ain’t for you” bit.
29. Overall, he’s been nominated for 19 Emmys and won four, including writing honors for his HBO series The Chris Rock Show, a mash-up of comedy and political, social and cultural commentary, which ran between 1997 and 2000, and his 2008 special Chris Rock: Kill the Messenger.
30. When he won his Emmy for The Chris Rock Show in 1999, he insisted onstage, “Conan has the best show, really. I do 13 shows a year, he does 100…so, Conan, you should’ve gotten it, but I’m gonna take it.” Conan O’Brien, sitting there in the audience, may have agreed.
31. Rock described his style to Oprah in 2002 as “half rapper, half preacher. My grandfather was a preacher, and when I’m talking to an audience, I am doing the same thing he did—giving people a new perspective on their lives.”
32. However, he told GQ in 2017, still invoking the preacher comparison, “Comedians have a harder gig. It’s hard to bomb as a preacher—people definitely wait until the end and go, ‘That guy was boring.’ And there’s a book. I wish there was a book of comedy I could refer to.”
