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| Chris Parnell | |
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 Parnell at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2007 |
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| Born | Thomas Christopher Parnell February 5, 1967 Memphis, Tennessee, U.S. |
| Years active | 1998 — present |
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.
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Parnell was born in Memphis, Tennessee. His father, Jack Parnell, is a commercial voice actor. After graduating from Germantown High School and the North Carolina School of the Arts, Parnell moved to Los Angeles where he joined the improv-sketch comedy troupe, The Groundlings. It was here he was discovered and asked to audition for Saturday Night Live. He joined Saturday Night Live as a featured player on September 26, 1998, and was promoted to regular cast status the following season. He was fired in the summer of 2001 and re-hired the following March. Budget cuts and hiring four new cast members left Lorne Michaels without room to pay 15 cast members. Parnell and Jerry Minor were chosen as the ones to be fired over Horatio Sanz, Rachel Dratch, and Maya Rudolph. However, thanks to lobbying from Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan, Lorne rehired Parnell, who returned to the cast in March 2002.citation needed More budget cuts in 2006 led to Parnell departing from SNL after his 8th season ended in May 2006. Only five people (Darrell Hammond, Tim Meadows, Kevin Nealon, Phil Hartman and Horatio Sanz) have been cast members longer. He also starred in the failed unaired sitcom Thick and Thin. He recently starred in the Supafloss music video, "Chuck Norris" (along with Jack Black and John C. Reilly) where he plays Chuck Norris. He plays the Narrator from the series of WordGirl.
Parnell has played in numerous sketches, commercial parodies, and has performed memorable impressions of various celebrities. Parnell is particularly adept at rapping. One of his most popular rap sketches is Lazy Sunday, a nerdcore rap video he shot with Andy Samberg about buying cupcakes and going to see The Chronicles of Narnia. The sketch has gained such widespread fame that it has been reproduced and parodied. He has also performed raps about hosts Jennifer Garner, Britney Spears, Kirsten Dunst and Ashton Kutcher.
In the summer of 2006, Lorne Michaels said that four cast members would be fired due to budget cuts, but he did not say who.[1] 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.