46 Fun Facts About Everybody Hates Chris

Which writer-producer co-created Everybody Hates Chris and directed its final episode himself?

Ali LeRoi co-created the series and stayed hands-on to the end, writing the final season's opening episode and directing the last one himself.

On which network did Everybody Hates Chris premiere on September 22, 2005?

The series premiered on UPN on September 22, 2005, and aired its first season there before UPN shut down in 2006 after merging with The WB.

In which Brooklyn neighbourhood is Everybody Hates Chris set?

Bedford-Stuyvesant is where the family lands after leaving a housing project in the first episode; the narrator jokes they'd have picked elsewhere had they known a crack epidemic was coming.

Everybody Hates Chris is set during which US president's years in office?

Ronald Reagan was in the White House for the show's whole 1982–87 span; the real comedian turned 13 back in 1978, so the series moves his teens a few years later.

Reviewers in 2005 described Everybody Hates Chris as an urban take on which earlier coming-of-age series?

The Wonder Years set the template of an adult narrator looking back on his teens; one reviewer said the grown-up Chris was simply playing 'the Daniel Stern role'.

Which actor plays the teenage Chris on Everybody Hates Chris?

Tyler James Williams was 12 when the series began; when it returned as a cartoon in 2024, both his screen parents came back to voice their roles, but a new actor took over young Chris.

Who plays Julius, Chris's penny-pinching father?

Terry Crews plays Julius; before acting he was an NFL linebacker, playing 32 games for the Rams, Chargers and Redskins between 1991 and 1995.

Which actress plays Rochelle, Chris's temperamental mother?

Tichina Arnold plays Rochelle, and 15 years after the finale she came back to voice the same sharp-tongued mother in the animated revival.

What is the name of Chris's popular, athletic younger brother?

Drew, played by Tequan Richmond, is Chris's younger brother, who despite being younger is taller, more athletic and luckier with girls than Chris.

Chris's little sister, spoiled by her father and fond of tattling on her brothers, is called what?

Tonya, played by Imani Hakim, is the baby of the family; when Chris is suspended from school, she makes him pay for her silence.

What is the surname of Greg, Chris's small, nerdy best friend at school?

Greg Wuliger, played by Vincent Martella, is Chris's undersized best friend; when Greg heads to a prestigious academy for high school, Chris tries and fails to follow him there.

Chris is bused across town to a junior high school that shares its name with which movie crime family?

Corleone Junior High shares its name with the Godfather family; Chris is its only Black student after his mother insists on a school outside the neighbourhood.

The title Everybody Hates Chris spoofs a hit sitcom built around which stand-up comedian?

Ray Romano starred in Everybody Loves Raymond, which ended its nine-season CBS run in May 2005; four months later the spoof flipped 'Loves' to 'Hates' for its bullied Brooklyn teenager.

Which well-meaning white teacher on Everybody Hates Chris treats Chris with condescending stereotyped assumptions?

Ms. Morello, played by Jacqueline Mazarella, means well but assumes the worst: when Chris brings in cans for the needy, she decides his own family is needy and sends the food to them.

What is the name of the red-haired bully who torments Chris at school?

Joey Caruso, played by Travis T. Flory, torments Chris for years; when a kid he picked on beats him up he goes soft, and school turns so chaotic that Chris tries to toughen him up again.

In Rochelle's catchphrase, what does she say her man has?

'I don't need this, my man has two jobs!' is Rochelle's parting shot each time she walks out of a job of her own, which she does more often in a month than most people do in a lifetime.

Which funeral director neighbour is known for exclaiming 'Tragic! Tragic!'?

He is played by Ernest Lee Thomas, best known as Raj on What's Happening!!

What is the name of the local grocery store owner Chris later works for?

Doc, played by Antonio Fargas, Huggy Bear in Starsky & Hutch, runs the corner store; Chris once quit over his pay to work at a Chinese restaurant, then came back.

Which street dealer on Everybody Hates Chris sells goods that are always bootlegged or stolen?

Risky, played by Mike Estime, deals only in bootleg or stolen goods; the knock-off perfume Chris buys from him for Mother's Day brings Rochelle out in a rash.

Which neighbourhood character routinely greets Chris with 'Lemme hold a dollar'?

Jerome, played by Kevontay Jackson, starts out as a block hustler shaking Chris down for a dollar a day, then warms into a big-brother figure who hands out advice.

What is the name of the homeless man who hangs around Chris's neighbourhood?

Kill Moves, played by Jeris Lee Poindexter, is the block's street-corner martial artist; in one episode Chris helps him track down his estranged mother for a school assignment.

Which sitcom veteran plays Vanessa, Rochelle's wise-cracking best friend from the beauty salon?

Jackee Harry, an Emmy winner for 227, plays Vanessa; when Rochelle's slacker brother asks Vanessa out, Rochelle tries to talk her friend out of going.

Which Oscar winner plays Louise, the nosy next-door neighbour and Tasha's grandmother?

Whoopi Goldberg plays Louise, who moves in next door with her granddaughter Tasha and at once pushes Rochelle to set up a neighbourhood watch.

Who plays Rochelle's soft-spoken but critical mother, Grandma Maxine?

Loretta Devine plays Grandma Maxine, a retired maths teacher and an even bigger 'ghetto snob' than her daughter; she is the one Chris secretly turns to when algebra defeats him.

Chris's high school shares its name with which Godfather crime family?

Tattaglia High School, which Chris enters at the start of the fourth and final season, shares its name with one of the rival mob families in The Godfather; he lands in an all-white homeroom.

What is the title of the Everybody Hates Chris series finale?

In 'Everybody Hates the G.E.D.' Chris, told that one more late arrival means repeating the grade, quits school to sit the G.E.D. instead, mirroring his creator's own path.

The final scene of Everybody Hates Chris spoofs which HBO drama's famous ending?

The finale cuts to black mid-scene, mimicking The Sopranos, whose June 2007 ending cut out on Tony's diner visit.

In the first episode of Everybody Hates Chris, which song scores Chris's slow-motion fight with a white bully?

Ebony and Ivory, Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder's chart-topping ode to racial harmony, plays while the two boys trade punches: a song about getting along, laid over a brawl.

Which Seinfeld star guest-starred on Everybody Hates Chris as Principal Edwards?

Jason Alexander, Seinfeld's George Costanza, plays Principal Edwards, who spends a snow day alone at school with Chris, the only pupil to turn up; Alexander also directed two episodes.

On Everybody Hates Chris, Julius greets any wasted food by announcing what about it?

Its exact price: Julius costs spilt milk or uneaten beans and rice to the cent on sight, a habit one 2005 reviewer called the show's best running gag.

Although set in Brooklyn, Everybody Hates Chris was filmed on soundstages in which city?

Los Angeles: the show's Brooklyn was built on soundstages at Paramount Studios in Hollywood, a continent away from the neighbourhood it recreates.

The Everybody Hates Chris actors who played Chris and Rochelle each won which honour for the roles?

Both leads won NAACP Image Awards, as Outstanding Actor and Outstanding Actress in a Comedy Series; the show's one Golden Globe nomination, for best comedy in 2006, came to nothing.

The animated revival Everybody Still Hates Chris premiered in September 2024 on which channel?

Everybody Still Hates Chris premiered on Comedy Central in September 2024, with the original Julius and Rochelle actors returning to voice their roles.

Which rock anthem does the family sing along to in the last scene of Everybody Hates Chris?

Livin' on a Prayer, the Bon Jovi hit, has Rochelle and the children singing at a restaurant table when Julius walks in with news Chris is desperate to hear; the series ends before anyone learns it.

The actor who played teenage Chris later won a Golden Globe playing Gregory Eddie on which sitcom?

Abbott Elementary won him the 2023 Golden Globe for best supporting actor on television, a return to the limelight after years of smaller parts such as a zombie-apocalypse survivor in The Walking Dead.

The actor who played Julius went on to play Sergeant Jeffords on which police comedy?

Brooklyn Nine-Nine cast him as Sergeant Jeffords for all eight seasons, surviving a 2018 cancellation when a rival network stepped in and picked the comedy up.

Before playing Rochelle, the actress spent five years as Pam on which 1990s sitcom?

Martin, the 1992–97 Martin Lawrence sitcom, cast her as Pam; a late episode doubled as the pilot for a Pam spin-off set at a record company, but the network never picked it up.

On Everybody Hates Chris, Julius buys a whole crate of which cheap meat?

Sausage it is, in 'Everybody Hates Sausage': Julius's bargain crate keeps it on the family's table for a week, until his daughter flatly refuses to eat any more.

After one season, Everybody Hates Chris moved to which network for its remaining three?

The CW was brand new, formed in 2006 when the show's first network and a rival both closed and pooled their line-ups, and it kept the comedy until the May 2009 finale.

Chris's athletic younger brother loves hockey and idolises which player?

Wayne Gretzky is such an idol to Chris's hockey-mad younger brother that in one episode the boy skips school to track him down, with Chris tagging along to keep him out of trouble.

Before playing teen Chris, the lead actor was a regular child cast member on which PBS series?

Sesame Street took him on as a regular after he landed his first commercial at the age of four, years before the sitcom made him famous.

Which sweet treat is Rochelle's jealously guarded comfort food on Everybody Hates Chris?

Chocolate Turtles are Rochelle's private stash; when her visiting mother eats them and then calls them nasty, Rochelle snaps that the least she could do is like them.

Which actor plays Monk, the paranoid veteran who helps mind the grocery store on Everybody Hates Chris?

Todd Bridges, Willis in Diff'rent Strokes, plays Monk; the part came more than a decade after he quit the drugs that had derailed his career, a fall and recovery he recounts in his memoir Killing Willis.

Everybody Hates Chris was first developed for which network, which then passed on it?

Fox set the project up in 2004 and then let it go; a much smaller network took it on, and on premiere night the cast-off had a bigger audience than Fox's own The O.C.

Which Good Times star plays Rochelle's father on Everybody Hates Chris, dying of a heart attack mid-visit?

Jimmie Walker, J.J. in Good Times, plays Gene; his sudden death leaves Rochelle too upset to function, so Chris has to step in and run the household.

In which country did a dubbed Everybody Hates Chris become a huge rerun hit from 2006?

Brazil took to the show as Todo Mundo Odeia o Chris once Record began airing it in 2006; in 2024 the actor who played Greg went viral there in a T-shirt declaring himself famous in Brazil.