Chris Rock has picked his moment. With a Black senator and a woman fighting for the Democratic nomination, the 2008 election is the kind of story Rock has been riffing on for years, and he is back on the road with a new stand-up tour, No Apologies, to take it on.
Rock has said film scripts weren’t exciting him, and that an election year this unusual was too good for a comedian to pass up. His act has always lived where race, class and politics meet, and few comics are better at saying the uncomfortable thing out loud and making a packed arena laugh at it.
The tour went on to take him across North America, to London and to South Africa, and later that year HBO aired Kill the Messenger, a special cut together from his shows in Johannesburg, London and New York.