Whoa, get ready for a “Saturday Night Live” scandal: former cast member Darrell Hammond is coming out with a tell-all memoir in which he reveals his rampant use of booze, cocaine, and crack during his 14-year tenure on the show. What an outrage! I’m going to put asterisks on all those laughs I got.
“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. [NY Post]
I just can’t believe that a bunch of comedians working late at night on the weekends in New York City would allow this kind of behavior. This will probably tarnish the show’s reputation forever.
