Chevy Chase has addressed the N-word scandal that led to his abrupt “Community” exit, telling the New York Times, “I’m not racist.”
Chase sat down with Marina Zenovich, the director of this week’s CNN documentary “I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not,” for a joint interview with the Times published Thursday. During the conversation, Chase was asked about his “Community” departure, as well as the scandal that seemingly accelerated his exit from the Dan Harmon-created NBC sitcom.
“It wasn’t a bad experience. I just didn’t think it was that good, the show,” Chase told the New York Times, while reflecting on his time on “Community.”
The actor played Pierce Hawthorne, a tone-deaf millionaire, through the first four seasons of “Community” before stepping away from the show. His exit came in the wake of increasingly public disagreements between him and Harmon, as well as a widely reported incident in which Chase allegedly said the N-word on set.
The latter incident was reportedly prompted by Chase’s growing frustrations with his character’s politically incorrect, racially insensitive storylines, one of which involved him performing a gag with a blackface hand puppet. In response to that bit, it has been reported that Chase asked aloud whether or not he would next be expected to say the N-word as his character. (He asked said question by allegedly saying the N-word himself.)
“Community” director Jay Chandrasekhar claims in “I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not” that the moment resulted in Chase’s co-star Yvette Nicole Brown, a Black actress, storming off the set. When Chase’s remark subsequently leaked to the press, he purportedly had a “meltdown,” during which he declared that his career was “ruined.” He left “Community” shortly afterward.
“It was too great a misunderstanding of what I was saying and not saying,” Chase told the Times about his “Community” departure. “I thought that there was at least one person — and another who, for some ungodly reason, didn’t get me, didn’t know who I was, or didn’t realize for one second I’m not racist. They were too young to be aware of my work. Instead, there was some sort of visceral reaction from them.”
When asked how he felt about his character’s ending on the show, Chase said, “I thought it ended great.”
None of Chase’s “Community” co-stars, including Brown, Donald Glover, Joel McHale, Alison Brie and Gillian Jacobs, agreed to participate in the new CNN documentary about him. In response to Chandrasekhar’s comments in the doc, though, Brown seemingly addressed online earlier this week the rumored on-set incident between her and Chase.
“There are things I’ve never spoken of publicly and perhaps never will,” Brown wrote Monday on Threads. “Anyone currently speaking FOR or ABOUT me with perceived authority is speaking without EVER speaking to me about the things they claim to know about. They actually don’t really know me — at all. They also have no knowledge of my relationship with anyone I’ve worked with & cannot credibly speak on any current or previous issues.”
“I hate that all this had to be said,” the actress concluded. “In East Cleveland speak: Keep my name out your mouth.”
Glover and Harmon, meanwhile, told the Nsew Yorker in 2018 that Chase used to routinely make racist jokes on the “Community” set, sometimes just to disrupt Glover’s takes.
