*Nick Cannon recently reflected on his decision to walk away from a reported $70,000 per episode bag at NBC’s “America’s Got Talent.”
Appearing on BigBoyTV’s “The Big Interview,” the multi-hyphenate said he has zero regrets over leaving the network after it reportedly clutched its pearls over a segment of his 2017 stand-up comedy special, “Stand Up, Don’t Shoot,” in which he accused NBC of stifling his creativity to appeal to a white audience.
“They threatened to fire me ’cause of something I said in one of my comedy specials. I said ‘You ain’t gotta threaten to fire me. I quit,’” Cannon said.
Cannon said several of his business associates advised him to stay with “AGT” because it’s among the most watched shows on NBC, averaging between 9 million and 16 million viewers each season, per TicketSmarter. Also, he was the highest-paid host at the time.
“Everybody that I looked up to, all my business people… people stopped working with me,” Cannon said. “You’re making a brash decision … This is a once in a lifetime opportunity … Nothing like this … This is the No. 1 show….’”
Cannon says NBC was also concerned that his departure over a racial allegation in his special would not be a good look, and therefore offered to give him a raise.
“They came back and doubled down with more money,” he said. “A lot of money, like twice what I was already making because for the optics of it, they didn’t want it to look like it was their fault. Especially when you put race and stuff involved. So, they was trying to make it good and clean it up and all of that. And I was like, ‘I don’t want your money.’”
Cannon of course landed on his feet with his own daytime talk show, albeit short-lived, and another hosting gig at Fox for the successful, “The Masked Singer.”
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