The newly released Chris Farley biography tells the story of the late SNL cast member’s life battles that eventually led to his death from a drug overdose at age 33.

The Chris Farley Show: A Biography in Three Acts was researched and arranged by his older brother, Tom, and written by Tanner Colby, a John Belushi biographer. The tell-all includes many interviews with Saturday Night Live cast mates, family and friends of the late actor.

Lorne Michaels commented on hiring Farley: “I’d had some of a concern that maybe he was too big, personality-wise, to play on television. Theatrically, he was sort of playing to the back of the house. But after we saw him, there really wasn’t much doubt.”

Michaels also relayed how he warned Chris Farley about Farley’s similar path as SNL’s John Belushi: “I said, ‘John missed most of the ’80s, all of the ’90s, and I don’t think that was his intention.’ I was pretty brutal with Chris. I mean, we buried John.”

SNL writer Bob Odenkirk described Chris Farley’s quirks, saying, “He’d open his wallet and lick everything inside it, the pictures, the money. He had to lick his shoelaces to tie them. It was totally nuts.”

Chris Rock commented on the Chippendales’ sketch, saying that it fed Farley’s need for approval: “‘Chippendales’ was a weird sketch. I always hated it. The joke of it is, basically, ‘We can’t hire you because you’re fat.’ There’s no comic twist to it. It’s just [bleep]ing mean. A more mentally together Chris Farley wouldn’t have done it, but Chris wanted so much to be liked. As funny as that sketch was … it’s one of the things that killed him.”