30 Rock’s Grizz Chapman Dies at 52 After Years of Illness

Grizz Chapman, who played Tracy Jordan’s confidant Grizz on NBC’s 30 Rock for seven seasons, died in his sleep Friday at 52 after years of dialysis treatment.

Grizz Chapman, the seven-foot-tall comedic actor who played the bodyguard-confidant Grizz across all seven seasons of NBC’s 30 Rock, died in his sleep on Friday, May 22, at the age of 52.

His longtime representative, Saideh A. Brown, confirmed the death to TMZ. The cause was a long battle with kidney disease, his cousin Donte “Hammer” Harrison, a member of the Harlem Globetrotters, said in an Instagram statement Friday.

“Life gave my cousin Grizz Chapman some heavy battles, but he fought them with strength and dignity until the very end,” Harrison wrote. He said Chapman had spent years on dialysis. Deadline’s obituary, which broke the news through Brown’s confirmation, did not include a more specific cause.

Chapman, born Grizzwald Chapman in Brooklyn on April 16, 1974, was working as a bouncer at a New York strip club when he met Tracy Morgan. Morgan recruited him to play one of the two members of Tracy Jordan’s onscreen entourage, alongside Kevin Brown, who played Dot Com. The pairing became one of the show’s most reliable visual jokes.

30 Rock ran from 2006 to 2013, won 16 Primetime Emmy Awards, and turned much of its writers’ room into household names. Chapman, in the bench role, appeared across all seven seasons.

His career extended past 30 Rock. He guest-starred in episodes of Blue Bloods, The Blacklist, and The Good Fight, the last of which is listed among his final television credits. He also produced his own YouTube variety series, Grizz Chronicles. Page Six, in its obituary including his cousin’s full Instagram statement, noted that his final Instagram post had gone up Sunday: a video of him dancing next to a photo of ’80s actor Sean Astin.

Chapman received a kidney transplant in July 2010 after years of severe hypertension and dialysis. He went public, signing on as a spokesperson for the National Kidney Foundation in March 2010 and appearing on The Dr. Oz Show in December 2009 to raise awareness of the underlying condition. Wikipedia’s biographical record of his transplant and advocacy work tracks the timeline.

He lived in Woodbridge, Virginia, a Washington, D.C. suburb. In December 2024, a tractor-trailer crashed into his home and destroyed it. He was not there at the time.

Chapman is survived by his wife and two children, who were described as devastated in the statement to TMZ.

He was 52.