- Chris Rock said he turned down offers to star in "The Sopranos" at the height of its acclaim.
- Rock said he enjoyed the show and didn't want to spoil it.
- He added that he almost turned down being in season four of "Fargo" for similar reasons.
The comedian Chris Rock has picked up some early awards buzz for his performance in the fourth season of the FX anthology series "Fargo," but he said he almost turned it down for the same reason he turned down offers to star in "The Sopranos" in the 1990s: He was afraid of ruining the show.
"Sometimes you can respect something so much, you don't even want to be a part of it," Rock said during The Hollywood Reporter's awards roundtable.
"Years ago, when I had my own show on HBO, it was at the height of 'The Sopranos,' and I got a couple of offers to be on 'The Sopranos' and I was like, 'I like it too much, I don't want to spoil it,'" he said.
But Rock said he was such a fan of "Fargo" that he "took the meeting anyway" and got an offer from Noah Hawley, the show's creator.
"He presents me with this offer, and I'm like, 'Whatever you want me to do, I'm down.' Because I saw how he handled Bokeem Woodbine," Rock said.
Woodbine starred in the second season of "Fargo" as Mike Milligan, one of the show's few recurring Black characters. Rock said that he had been impressed with how Hawley handled Woodbine's character and that he knew he would be in good hands.
"Sometimes people do amazing work and then when they handle Black people, it's horrible," Rock said, adding that with Hawley, "I saw how he handled Bokeem and I was like, 'I can totally be in your hands.'"
He added: "Once you see that, you go, 'OK, this guy [Hawley] has no problem putting himself in that character's shoes.'"
Rock said that often the people who give notes about a script's structure and characters struggle to imagine themselves in the shoes of Black characters.
"The women in the room give you notes about the women, the underlings in the room give you the notes about the underlings, and the head guy gives you the notes about the lead. They don't even realize they're doing this," he said. "Now the problem is that some people have a hard time imagining they're Black, so there's no notes on the lead if he's Black. Or if the lead girl is Black, there are no notes from the white women. Because they couldn't step into it.
"But Noah had no problem being Bokeem, and that's why it's written so well."
Rock stars as Loy Cannon, a 1950s crime lord, in "Fargo" season four. Jason Schwartzman, Jessie Buckley, and Ben Whishaw also star in the anthology series, which is loosely based on the Coen brothers' 1996 Oscar-winning film.
The comedian recently told Entertainment Weekly that he thought Cannon was probably the best role of his career and perhaps the best he'd ever have.
"That's how it works. Morgan Freeman is in 'The Shawshank Redemption.' He's amazing. He's made a kazillion dollars since then," Rock said. "He never got a part that good again. When you get these great parts you have to make the most of them."
