{"id":689850,"date":"2026-05-24T03:41:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T03:41:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/689850\/"},"modified":"2026-05-24T03:41:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T03:41:09","slug":"r-i-p-30-rocks-grizz-chapman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/689850\/","title":{"rendered":"R.I.P. 30 Rock’s Grizz Chapman"},"content":{"rendered":"

Grizz Chapman has died. Although his career encompassed stints as a bouncer, a music manager, a comic shop owner, and more, Chapman was best known as an actor, jumping to prominence thanks to a single role he lent his own name to: Warren \u201cGrizz\u201d Grizzworld, the gentle giant\/entourage member he played across seven seasons of NBC\u2019s\u00a030 Rock. Although he struggled to break out into roles in other projects\u2014including small stints in films like\u00a0The Cobbler\u00a0and\u00a0Jodie Foster\u2019s\u00a0Money Monster\u2014Chapman was a key part of one of the 21st century\u2019s great TV comedies, one that relied on his comic timing as much as the notable profile he cut. Per Variety<\/a>, Chapman\u2019s death was confirmed on social media today by Kevin Brown, his frequent scene partner on the series. Chapman was 52.<\/p>\n

\ufeff<\/p>\n

Chapman was reportedly born in New York; Tracy Morgan revealed, on a commentary for an early episode of\u00a030 Rock, that he first met him while the 6\u201911\u201d Chapman was working as a bouncer at a strip club. After being cast on 30 Rock, Chapman worked with Brown to refine the Grizz and Dot Com characters, helping to transform them from interchangeable members of fictitious comedian Tracy Jordan\u2019s entourage into key parts of the show\u2019s comedy ensemble. Chapman ultimately appeared in more than half of the episodes of 30 Rock\u2018s run, despite suffering serious health problems over the course of the series, which ultimately necessitated a kidney transplant in 2010. His performance on the series developed from a fairly stock premise\u2014big, tough guy who\u2019s actually both sensitive and smart\u2014and then built from there, becoming part of the show\u2019s convoluted comic lore.<\/p>\n

After\u00a030 Rock\u00a0ended in 2013, Chapman struggled to make further headway in the world of comedy. He filmed a few comedy shorts (posted on YouTube as \u201cThe Grizz Chronicles\u201d) and attempted to develop a TV show based on the Bronx comic book shop he co-owned, The Lair. But despite a few high-profile acting roles, nothing seemed to take, and roles like \u201cBouncer\u201d (in an episode of\u00a0The Good Fight) were still showing up on his IMDB page as recently as 2018.<\/p>\n

One of Chapman\u2019s family members wrote on social media that he died on May 22 \u201cafter years of fighting illness and dialysis.\u201d Variety\u00a0reports that he is survived by his wife and two children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Grizz Chapman has died. Although his career encompassed stints as a bouncer, a music manager, a comic shop…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":689851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[49,48,75],"class_list":["post-689850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/689851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}