Dan Harmon Says Chevy Chase Told Racist Jokes ‘to Disrupt’ Donald Glover on ‘Community’

“Community” creator said that Chase would say things like “People think you’re funnier because you’re black” on set

Community
NBC

“Community” creator Dan Harmon said that Chevy Chase would make racist jokes “to disrupt” his co-star Donald Glover during filming, things like, “People think you’re funnier because you’re black.”

“Chevy was the first to realize how immensely gifted Donald was, and the way he expressed his jealousy was to try to throw Donald off,” Harmon said in a recent profile of Glover in The New Yorker. “I remember apologizing to Donald after a particularly rough night of Chevy’s non-P.C. verbiage, and Donald said, ‘I don’t even worry about it.’”

“By the end of Season 2, I literally was writing scenes that ended ‘and then Donald says something to button the scene,’” Harmon added. “I’m a pretty narcissistic guy, so for me to do that I had to know that, one, he was more talented than I was and, two, he was a better person than I was, that he wouldn’t misuse his power over me.”

“I just saw Chevy as fighting time — a true artist has to be O.K. with his reign being over,” Glover said in the piece. “I can’t help him if he’s thrashing in the water. But I know there’s a human in there somewhere — he’s almost too human.”

Chase said he was “saddened to hear that Donald perceived me in that light.”

Glover and Chase both were in the main cast for the first four seasons of “Community,” with Glover appearing in only the first five episodes of Season 5 and Chase popping in and out as a guest that same year. The “Atlanta” creator/star moved on to his music career under the moniker Childish Gambino, and told The New Yorker that, “Authenticity is the journey of figuring out who you are through what you make.”

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