Later on this month, Chris Rock will make an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon where he will reunite with his comedian friend. The two have known each other for some time and are both Saturday Night Live alums, so after Fallon caught heat for wearing blackface to impersonate Rock back in 2000, the public dragged the late-night talk show host through the mud. Jimmy Fallon faced accusations of all kinds during his scandal, but Chris Rock has addressed the controversy and said it isn't as big of a deal as people tried to make it.
“Hey, man, I’m friends with Jimmy. Jimmy’s a great guy,” Rock told the New York Times. “And he didn’t mean anything. A lot of people want to say intention doesn’t matter, but it does. And I don’t think Jimmy Fallon intended to hurt me. And he didn’t.” Rock also spoke about Fallon in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter and added that he didn't even see the sketch when it first aired 20 years ago and chalked the whole incident up to being "bad comedy."
People accused Jimmy Fallon of being a racist, but Rock insists that his friend "doesn’t have a racist bone in his body." It seems that everyone has moved on from the viral moment, but Rock wanted to defend Fallon's character.