Wyatt Cenac Recalls The Time He Got Into A Physical Altercation With Norm MacDonald

Can you believe it’s been almost two years since Wyatt Cenac left The Daily Show? We haven’t seen much of Cenac (who was most recently heard voicing a Buzzfeed writer on the animated series Bojack Horseman) in the past two years, but that’s about to change as he has a brand new Netflix standup special premiering today on Netflix.

As such, Cenac joined Huffington Post Live yesterday to promote his special and among the topics of conversation that came up was that way before The Daily Show, Cenac worked with Stephen Colbert as a 19-year-old intern on Saturday Night Live. Most writers and cast members probably don’t remember every intern that passes through the hallowed halls of SNL, however when he came aboard Comedy Central years later, he recalls Colbert remembering him as the dude who got into a fight with Norm MacDonald.

One night an impromptu soccer game broke out in the hallway, and Colin Quinn grabbed Cenac to face off against Stephen Colbert and Norm MacDonald. As he explains, though, things quickly got heated and escalated from there:

“And so we were playing and Norm, at the time, was trying to quit smoking, so I think he was a little more on edge, but we got into a little scrum over the ball,” he said. “We were both kicking at the ball and I wound up clipping him in the shin. And he got really mad and he tried to throw me across the room. And so then I shoved him off of me and I was like, ‘Get off of me’ and then he shoved me back and we kind of got in a shoving match.”

Fortunately, it ended there because neither party was willing to throw a punch:

“I didn’t want to throw because I was an intern and I knew if I threw I’d get kicked out. And I think on his part he was like, ‘Well, I don’t want to throw because if I throw, this kid will sue me and he’ll be the new president of NBC.'”

Who knows, maybe Norm should have thrown that punch after all. If Wyatt Cenac had become the president of NBC, even then Norm MacDonald would have probably stood a better chance of not losing his job.

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