Thomas Christopher "
Chris"
Parnell (born February 5, 1967) is an
American actor and
comedian who was a
Saturday Night Live cast member in 1998-2001 and 2002-2006. He has a recurring role as Dr. Leo Spaceman on
NBC's
Emmy Award-winning
30 Rock and was a supporting cast member of the short-lived 2008 sitcom
Miss Guided. He also attended The University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
Biography
Career
He joined
Saturday Night Live as a featured player on September 26, 1998, and was promoted to regular cast status the following season. In the summer of 2001, budget cuts and hiring four new cast members required
Lorne Michaels to dismiss two cast members; he chose to lay off Parnell and
Jerry Minor over
Horatio Sanz,
Rachel Dratch, and
Maya Rudolph.
On SNL, Parnell appeared in numerous
sketches, and
commercial parodies, and performed memorable
impressions of various
celebrities. One of his most popular sketches is
Lazy Sunday, a rap video he shot with
Andy Samberg about buying
cupcakes and going to see
The Chronicles of Narnia. He has also performed raps about hosts
Jennifer Garner,
Britney Spears,
Kirsten Dunst and
Ashton Kutcher.
In the summer of 2006, Lorne Michaels announced that four cast members would be fired due to budget cuts, but he did not say who.
[Four SNLers are history, says Lorne Michaels] On
September 22,
2006 it was announced that three cast members had been fired: Parnell,
Horatio Sanz, and
Finesse Mitchell. This effectively made him the only SNL performer to have been fired twice by Lorne Michaels. He had been with SNL for eight seasons; only five people (
Darrell Hammond,
Tim Meadows,
Kevin Nealon,
Phil Hartman and
Horatio Sanz) have been cast members longer. He has since made uncredited cameo appearances on the show, most recently in 2008 parodying newscasters
Tom Brokaw,
Jim Lehrer, and
Bob Schieffer.
Recurring characters
- Alan "Sticks" McRae, one of Deandra Wells's drummers
- Daniel, a student from Jimmy Fallon's "Jarrett's Room" sketch who lived in the dorm next to Jarret and Gobi and always falls for their bogus tricks to get girls (because of Parnell's short-lived termination, Parnell's Daniel was replaced by Jeff Richards's character, Jeff, a jock whose gross habits are always caught on Jarret's webcam)
- Jeph, a member of the boy band 7 Degrees Celsius
- Kevin Aquarius, a dancer covered in silver paint who does the robot on the talk show "Veronica and Co."
- One of the Lundford Twins' Feel Good Variety Hour dancers
- Merv "The Perv" Watson, a sleazy man who hits on women with equally sleazy double-entendres. Has a British cousin named Steve the Skeev (played by Colin Farrell) and a twin brother named Irv (played by Johnny Knoxville).
- Sean DeMarco, a wannabe dancer who auditions to be an interpretive dancer for SNL's musical guests.
- Tato, the strange manservant to bizarre art dealers Nuni and Nooni
- An eyepatched Telemundo actor from Besos Y Lagrimas
- Terrye Funck, a wannabe talk show host who creates his own show in the basement of his mom's house
- Thad from Gays In Space
- Tyler, a frequent patient from the recurring sketch Appalachian Emergency Room who always tells Nerod (Seth Meyers) the receptionist tall tales about how he got an object (can of Axe body spray, jar of cotton balls, a plastic bowling pin, a Native American rainstick, his car keys, etc) stuck up his rectum (and in one case, how he got a watermelon stuck to his penis).
- Warren Kirney, a married man who always convinces the hired help in his family to have a three-way with him and his wife (Ana Gasteyer)
- Wayne Bloder, a barfly who always hits on the women there, along with his brother, Kip (played by Jimmy Fallon)
- DJ Intro, a DJ who can sing every action. ("SNL, On "Deep House Dish")
Celebrity impersonations
Filmography
TV appearances (outside SNL)
Music appearances
See also
