Tracy Morgan is a comedian who first rose to fame during his time on the long-running comedy show Saturday Night Live.
His time on the show allowed him to make lifelong friendships with his fellow cast members and other popular comedians of the time.
Throughout his career, Morgan has allowed his boisterous voice and cartoon-inspired physical comedy to engrain his humor into generations of fans.
What Is Tracy Morgan’s Net Worth?
Tracy Morgan has a net worth of $70 million, which he has mostly earned through his career as both an actor and a comedian.
Morgan has had a large resume of both movie and television roles, but it took the death of a friend to get Morgan into comedy.
Tracy Morgan grew up in The Bronx, with his stay-at-home mother and his heroin-addicted, veteran father.
Due to his father’s addiction, Morgan’s parents divorced when he was only six years old.
From that point, Morgan was sent to Bedford Stuyvesant’s Tompkins Houses where he was raised and began to get bullied.
During his sophomore year of high school, he found that his father had contracted AIDS due to his heroin addiction in 1985.
By 1987, Morgan had dropped out of high school to take care of his father and married his first wife, who had two children.
His father died later that year and Morgan no longer could afford to support his little family.
Tracy Morgan resorted to selling crack in order to keep his family clothed and fed.
His best friend had recommended that he should get off of the streets and should instead be on a stage doing stand-up comedy.
His best friend was murdered shortly after giving Morgan that advice, which Morgan took to heart.
Little did his friend know that he was setting up his best friend for a much better future.
It wouldn’t take long for Morgan to get his first role on the show Martin.
Morgan had his own namesake show shortly after getting the introductory role.
He would continue to climb the ladder of success, working with legendary comedians, rappers, and actors.
Tracy Morgan is best known for his time on Saturday Night Live, but he’s done so much more.
Tracy Morgan On Television
The first role that Tracy Morgan ever got was playing Hustle Man on Martin Lawrence’s Martin.
Morgan’s character appeared in seven episodes across the comedy show’s five-season run.
Despite this being Morgan’s first television appearance, audiences were dying to get more of his over-the-top Bronx personality.
Morgan’s second television role was on the situational comedy show, 3rd Rock from the Sun.
He appeared in the episode Dick’ll Take Manhattan: Part 1 in his first cameo role.
With the episode taking place in New York City, there was no one better to represent the city than Morgan at the time.
For a short time, Tracy Morgan hosted the Comedy Central show Comic Groove, which also starred comedians such as Kevin Hart, Ken Jeong, Capone, and Cocoa Brown.
The Tracy Morgan Show first aired in 2003 and only lasted for a year before the show was ended.
The cast included stars such as Heavy D, Katt Williams, John Witherspoon, Tamala Jones, and Marc John Jefferies.
In 2006, Tracy Morgan took on his first voice acting role in Where My Dogs At? which also starred Jeffery Ross and John DiMaggio.
The animated series was only eight episodes long and aired on MTV.
On the adult cartoon show Mr. Pickles, Morgan played Skids in the episode Dead Man’s Curve.
The comedian also appeared twice on The Simpsons in the episodes Baby You Can’t Drive My Car and My Way or the Highway to Heaven.
Morgan’s most recent and popular work is his show The Last O.G.
Often seen as a continuation of The Tracy Morgan Show, the story follows Tray Barker, who has just been released from a 15-year prison sentence.
Barker has learned how to deal with the change that has occurred in his hometown during his time away.
Starting On Saturday Night Live
Although Tracy Morgan has managed to create an extensive filmography for himself on television, he is best known for his work on Saturday Night Live.
With his combination of fan-loved characters and booming personality, Morgan has become many people’s favorite cast member of Saturday Night Live.
The character that Tracy Morgan is best known for is Brian Fellow, who claims to be an expert zoologist.
Brian Fellow even had his own highly anticipated segment called Brian Fellow’s Safari Planet.
Based on the pancake syrup company Aunt Jemima, Morgan created Uncle Jemima. While his wife may have sold syrup, Uncle Jemima wanted to sell his liquor, Uncle Jemima’s Pure Mash, in a similar fashion.
During his time on the show, Morgan was able to work with some of the best Saturday Night Live stars.
His cast members throughout the years included Tina Fey, Kenan Thompson, Alec Baldwin, Leslie Jones, Bernie Mac, Shaquille O’Neal, Bill Hader, Andy Samberg, and Bobby Moynihan
Morgan took nearly every type of role that Saturday Night Live had to offer.
He went from playing smaller roles to writing and starring his own sketches that were centric to him.
Morgan even sang one of Saturday Night Live’s Christmas songs, I Wish It Was Christmas Today.
Although Tracy Morgan would take a break from SNL for a short time during the early 2010s, Morgan could never fully leave the show behind.
After returning to host the show, Morgan was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series.
Being able to come back to Saturday Night Live after his major car crash in 2014 gave him hope and motivation.
The familiar show allowed him to gently sink back into his role as a comedian and a host, after temporarily losing his ability to walk and speak.
Joining Tina Fey’s 30 Rock
During his early years of Saturday Night Live, Tracy Morgan befriended fellow comedian Tiny Fey.
Fey had always loved Morgan’s exuberant personality and stage presence, so she wrote a character for her coworker and put him in her newest show, 30 Rock.
Tina Fey and Tracy Morgan weren’t the only former cast members that were added to the new cast.
They were also joined by Alec Baldwin, who nearly wasn’t cast for the role of Jack Donaghy due to Fey believing he was too busy for the role.
However, Baldwin was more than happy to join his old co-stars for the show thanks to their ability to work with his schedule.
While Tracy Morgan and Tina Fey are enough to have anyone laughing, there are very few comedic trios better than Tracy Morgan, Tina Fey, and Alec Baldwin.
The trio always had a good time filming together because they could always make each other genuinely laugh.
Because each of their roles was so similar to their real-life counterparts, the cast would often go off script and improvise.
The lines that they would come up with off the tops of their heads would often catch the other cast members off guard, causing them to break out in laughter.
One especially memorable occurrence of this was while Tracy Morgan and Tina Fey’s characters were walking around a corner.
Seeing that his line was too short for the distance he and Fey had to walk, he began adding to a list of absurd items for a wealthy person to own.
It quickly became apparent that Tracy Morgan had very little interest in sticking to a script, which caused some of his castmates to believe he didn’t even read the script.
Morgan claims that he simply has fun with their scripts.
His Time In Film
It didn’t take Tracy Morgan long before he’d star in his first movie thanks to the friend he made on the set of his first role, Martin Lawrence. Lawrence, who directed and wrote the movie, had Morgan cast as a bartender in A Thin Line Between Love and Hate.
Morgan also starred in the cult classic Half Baked as V.J.
This movie was studded with a slew of stars such as Dave Chappelle, Jim Breuer, Guillermo Díaz, Tommy Chong, Snoop Dogg, Willie Nelson, and Ho Chow.
Tracy Morgan’s first major role in a film was Troy in the coming-of-age movie 30 Years to Life.
Erika Alexander, Melissa De Sousa, Paula Jai Parker, and Allen Payne all starred in the movie as well.
Alongside Kevin Smith, Jason Mewes, Will Ferrell, Ben Affleck, George Carlin, Carrie Fisher, and countless other stars, Morgan starred in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
He played Pumpkin Escobar in the sequel movie.
That wouldn’t be his last time performing with an all-star cast. Morgan was Reggie Rosengold in Frank McKlusky, C.I., which also starred Dolly Parton, Dave Sheridan, Randy Quaid, and George Lopez.
One of the movies that Tracy Morgan is best known for is Head of State with Chris Rock, Bernie Mac, and Tamala Jones.
This was the movie that introduced Morgan and Jones, which allowed them to work again together on The Tracy Morgan Show where Jones played Tracy’s wife.
Only two years later in 2005, Tracy Morgan and Chris Rock would team up again to star in Adam Sadler’s The Longest Yard.
The movie also starred Burt Reynolds, Terry Crews, Nelly, and Michael Irvin.
In 2008, Morgan appeared in First Sunday, where he shared the screen with Ice Cube and Katt Williams once again.
Learning Not to Ignore His Diabetes
Things had been going excellently in Morgan’s career, but it would become extremely rocky when Morgan began experiencing extreme medical problems, beginning in the late 1990s.
One of his medical problems nearly cost him his foot
Morgan had first been diagnosed with diabetes in 1996, which he widely ignored for a while after his diagnosis.
This caused him to get very ill during the filming of 30 Rock and made many of his castmates concerned.
During the filming of the first season of 30 Rock, Tracy Morgan got an alarming wake-up call that made him take his diabetes more seriously.
His doctor warned him that if he didn’t start taking the steps necessary to manage his diabetes, he was going to lose his foot.
Just a year later, Morgan’s diabetes led him to urgently need to have a kidney transplant.
Luckily, his ex-girlfriend, Tanisha Hall, was more than glad to donate her compatible kidney for the comedian.
The worst part of the treatment regime for Morgan was having to take his insulin.
Ever since he risked losing his foot, he never goes a day without his insulin and never lets his blood sugar get over 120.
However, Morgan has still had some struggles with his medical problems.
In 2012, he became unconscious during the Sundance Film Festival.
The actor claims that it was the altitude that caused him to black out.
Around 34 million Americans have Type 2 diabetes, like Tracy Morgan.
Those who have Type 2 diabetes have blood sugar levels that run higher than what is recommended.
Morgan believes that his early struggles with alcoholism played a major role in his becoming diabetic.
He is grateful that 30 Rock kept him busy and sober while still allowing him to act and party like he was before.
His Near Fatal Car Crash
In 2014, Tracy Morgan was riding in a limousine with Jimmy McNair and six other people.
While this group was traveling on a New Jersey turnpike, a commercial semi-truck crashed into their limousine, killing Jimmy McNair and seriously injuring all of the other passengers.
The driver, who worked for Walmart, had been driving for 28 hours in order to reach his destination on time and didn’t notice all the cars around him slowing down as traffic began to jam up on the turnpike.
He noticed some motorcycles right in front of his moving truck and swerved to avoid them, and instead, hitting the limousine that Morgan and McNair were riding in.
This rear-ended and flipped the limousine on its side.
The crash broke many of Tracy Morgan’s ribs, nearly turned his femur to dust, and broke every bone in his face.
Morgan was in a coma for multiple days and woke up blind, only regaining his vision a full week later.
The severe damage to his body caused Morgan to lose much of his mobility, requiring him to use a wheelchair for months.
Through the support of his family and doctors, Morgan was able to get to the point of just using a cane.
One of the hardest injuries to recover from was the traumatic brain injury that was also caused by the crash.
For the first year after the crash, Morgan would go through long cycles of depression as a result.
When Tracy Morgan took Walmart to court over the incident, the major company attempted to argue that Morgan’s injuries weren’t the result of the crash but rather caused by Morgan’s decision to not wear a seat belt.
However, it was also brought to the court’s attention that the truck driver had been speeding before the crash happened.
The lawsuit has since been settled for an undisclosed amount.
The Future For Tracy Morgan
Despite the hardships that Tracy Morgan has gone through, he has never let them stop him from making other people smile.
Even at the most difficult points in his life, he found the greatest joy in making other people laugh.
After his best friend was murdered, he made it his mission to live out the destiny that his best friend believed was out there for him.
He was able to play countless characters on television and have people crying from laughter by just being himself.
His most recent project has been The Last O.G., which is entering its fourth season on TBS.
He is set to appear in a sequel of the 1988 movie Twins as the long-lost third sibling to the characters played by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito.
This Bronx native has proven the fact that New Yorkers are some of the most resilient people in the world.
Tracy Morgan lost his father, his best friend, his comedic mentor, and his health, but still found the strength within himself to continue finding joy in his life.
Through the support of his family and friends, Morgan has managed to keep showing the world all that he has to offer.
Tracy Morgan isn’t slowing down anytime soon.
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