Chris Redd is setting the record straight after previously claiming that he sold prescription pills to his Saturday Night Live co-stars.
Redd, who was an SNL castmember for five seasons, told TMZ in an interview published on Thursday that he was “being facetious about the drug-dealing thing.”
“I wasn’t drug dealing to my castmates. I wasn’t dropping off a pack,” the comedian explained. “I wasn’t Walter White-ing. I was trying … to make light of it, because I was feeling super vulnerable and raw at the time.”
Redd opened up about his pill abuse in a video posted to social media on Jan. 6, saying at the time that he suffered from “pill problems” while starring on SNL. In the clip, the comedian recalled “selling [pills] some to people, to some of my castmates.”
Redd admitted to TMZ that he did use Adderall and Xanax without a prescription
He said he obtained the pills illegally because he was afraid to go to the doctor, for fear they’d “say I was crazy.”
But he stressed that he was “not selling.”
“I had a full-time job as a comic,” Redd said before drawing attention to SNL’s history of drug abuse among castmembers.
“The drug issue at SNL was there before I was there, and I had nothing to do with that,” Redd added. “I just kind of worded it the way I worded it. I didn’t think [anybody] was really going to take it serious, because I wasn’t really in that way. And there are so many other things I was talking about.”
In the video posted to Instagram last week, Redd also opened up about dating former SNL co-star Kenan Thompson’s ex-wife, Christina Evangeline. He said at the time that the affair was unplanned.
Redd joined SNL as a featured player during the 2017-18 season. He was promoted to the main cast in 2019 after winning an Emmy for outstanding music and lyrics for the song “Come Back Barack” with lyricists Thompson and Will Stephen and composer Eli Brueggemann.
