Tracy Morgan Surprises Seth Meyers With a Dark Callback to His 2014 Crash

Tracy Morgan is still batting a thousand in his late-night appearances, even after the retirement of Conan O’Brien. Last night, the SNL and 30 Rock star appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers to promote the musical Christmas comedy Spirited, a punched-up retelling of A Christmas Carol starring Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds. 

As is customary whenever Morgan makes an appearance on a talk show, the stand-up legend immediately hijacked the evening and pushed Meyers into the backseat while he ragged on the band, declared himself King of New York and spoke on supernatural matters while his host looked on helplessly. Oh, and at some point he mentioned something about a movie.

Morgan was kind enough to break some election results that were lost during the midterm coverage this past week, revealing that the star of The Last O.G. is now the King of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. Morgan does not, however, have dominion over Staten Island, because “that’s Wu-Tang’s territory.”

The Brooklyn-born comic and monarch waxed poetic about his home city, quoting John Lennon as he called New York “Rome” and “The Center of the Universe” before detailing his plan to institute an NFL-wide policy dictating that all football players will eat “pork, beans and franks” for lunch, replacing any nutritionist-recommended meals with “cowboy food.”

The darkest joke of the night seemed to go over the heads of some of the Late Night audience members. Meyers played a clip from Spirited, in which Morgan plays the Ghost of Christmas Future, prompting Meyers to ask Morgan if he believes in ghosts. Morgan replied, “Only if they’ve been hit by Walmart trucks.” In 2014, of course, Morgan was involved in a deadly six-vehicle crash when a sprinter van carrying the comedian and members of his entourage was struck by a tractor-trailer operated by Walmart, resulting in the death of Morgan’s longtime friend and collaborator James McNair, better known as Jimmy Mack.

Morgan sustained serious injuries from the crash, and, facing a long and arduous recovery process, the comedian’s return to stand-up seemed to be in doubt. The harrowing ordeal and the long journey toward recovery was the focus of Morgan’s 2017 special, Staying Alive, his first since the crash. 

The prolific comedian is thankfully back to form with fresh takes on the rocky marriage between Mr. and Mrs. Claus and the revelation that Rudolph’s red nose is the result of cocaine addiction. Hopefully, this is just a taste of what Morgan has in store in Spirited — The Ghost of Christmas Future better have some hot takes on Frosty the Snowman.