Former “Saturday Night Live” star Chris Redd is publicly detailing his experience being attacked last month outside a famed New York City comedy club where he had been scheduled to perform.
In a preview of Tuesday’s “The Last Laugh” podcast, produced by The Daily Beast, Redd, 37, said he sustained two fractures in his nose and a fracture in his cheek in the unprovoked attack outside the Comedy Cellar in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village neighborhood just after 9:30 p.m. on Oct. 26.
“It was just so much blood,” Redd said on the episode preview. “I was trying to figure out where he was, and I couldn’t chase him down the street with blood gushing out my face.”
Redd, a five-season cast member of SNL who announced in September he would not be returning for the show’s current season, said he was assaulted as he was arriving at the club to perform three sets and texting his cousin who was working at the Olive Tree Cafe, directly above the club, to get some fries before his first set.
“As I put my phone in my pocket … this man hit me in the face with something. … I thought it was brass knuckles, because it cut my nose to the bone,” Redd said on “The Last Laugh.”
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“I’ve been boxing for, like, years. … I’ve taken a punch to the face before, so it wasn’t terrifying, but what was worrisome is how much blood was coming out of my face,” he said, adding, “A fist don’t normally do all of that at one time, so it was safe to assume I was hit with something [else].”
Police said a punch “with a closed fist” was the source of the assault, adding that the attacker ran away.
Police added that Redd was treated at NYC Health and Hospitals/Bellevue for a fractured nose.
After he was hit, Redd said, he briefly fell to the ground before he jumped back to his feet. “He hit me, he was gone, I was gushing blood so I couldn’t look around,” he said.
Redd said the blood was the only thing that prevented him from performing that night: “If we could’ve stopped the bleeding, I would’ve went on stage,” he said on the podcast.
Now, he’s preparing to make the assault part of his next set, he said. “I got some jokes, for sure,” Redd said. “As many jokes as other people have, nobody has as many jokes about this than I do.”
Police are still searching for the attacker, whom they describe as a man 35 to 40 years old, about 6 feet, 2 inches tall and 280 pounds. He was last seen wearing a blue jacket; a blue shirt; black pants; black, gray and white sneakers; a multicolor fedora; and a black mask.
Minyvonne Burke contributed.