30 Rock’s Grizz Chapman Dead at 52

“Rest easy, cousin,” he added. “Your name and legacy will live on forever.”

Chapman is survived by his wife and two children.

Chapman got his start on 30 Rock after meeting costar Tracy Morgan while working as a bouncer at a New York night club. After sparking up a friendship with the comedian, Chapman went on to play one of the fictional Tracy Jordan’s trusted entourage members alongside Kevin Brown, who played Dot Com.

“I worked hard to get the part, and a lot of people think that because Tracy and me are friends, I automatically got the part,” Chapman told CBR in 2012. “What I can say is that Tracy was an integral part in me keeping my job because there were four members of the entourage originally, but NBC came to Tina Fey and Tracy and said they couldn’t pay for all four.”

“So, Tracy said we’re gonna keep just two guys, which included me,” he added. “I made the cut. I worked hard to get there. I worked really hard.”

Though Chapman went on to appear in shows such as The Black List and Blue Bloods, movies like Money Monster and even his own YouTube series, he was candid about the challenges of landing work in Hollywood.

“I get a lot of the time, ‘We don’t know how to market you or you’re too big.’ Or, ‘We have one of you already,’” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2012. “But you don’t have one of me already; you don’t have a seven foot, lovable guy. You don’t have that.”