Patton Oswalt once again defended his longtime friend and comedy contemporary Dave Chappelle on Tuesday, saying that the string of transphobic jokes that got him in hot water in recent years do not make Chappelle transphobic, but that “he’s reacting to some things that happened to him when he was young.”
“I thought the jokes were lazy. I don’t think he’s transphobic,” Oswalt said on a Tuesday episode of the “We Might Be Drunk” podcast with hosts Mark Normand and Sam Morril. Maintaining his support for the trans community, Oswalt said that Chappelle is “f–king brilliant. I came up with him, he’s a friend, but we disagree on this one f—king thing. I don’t agree with his stance on this one thing. Comedians fight about s—t all the time.”
It echoed Oswalt’s 2022 apology after blowback from trans fans and their allies for posting a New Year’s Eve photo with Chappelle on Instagram, captioning the image, “I ended the year with a real friend and a deep laugh. Can’t ask for much more.”
Oswalt’s apology — posted just the next day, Jan. 1, 2022 — said that while Chappelle as a comic is “the funniest I’ve ever met” and that they’d known each other since they were teenagers, “I support trans peoples’ rights — ANYONE’S rights — to live safely in the world as their fullest selves.”
“For all the things he’s helped ME evolve on, I’ll always disagree with where he stands NOW on transgender issues,” Oswalt said of Chappelle. “But I also don’t believe a seeker like him is done evolving, learning. You know someone that long, see the struggles and changes, it’s impossible to cut them off.”
The sordid history and social media fallout against Oswalt from both his fans and staunch supporters of Chappelle came up on Tuesday’s podcast with Normand and Morril as the three reflected on the reactionary nature of X in contrast to comedy being “one of the most ephemeral art forms in existence.”
“I’ve said plenty of s—t on my early albums that now I know better,” Oswalt said, explaining that comedy “doesn’t age.”
“We should accept that and kind of roll with it,” he said. “But at the time, I have a lot of friends, I have family members who are trans, who are transitioning, and I talked to them, and they’re f—king terrified right now. And it’s the exact same thing to me back when Black people would say, ‘The cops beat us up all the time,’ and it’s like, ‘Oh this is all bulls—t, this is fear mongering,’ and then we put cameras on cops and lo and behold, there’s footage of cops beating the f—k out of [them]. Listen to the minority group. If they’re telling you they’re scared, they’re not making s—t up.”
Oswalt then emphasized that one of the gifts of comedy is its ability to evolve with the times. Comedians can still mine the topics they want at the mic, but it’s their job to “find a way to make it funny.”
“If you’re a comedian and enough people are saying, ‘Hey, this is really, I’m coming to you because I’m not a scold, I’m just, like, this is really harmful and this is why,’ just go, I’m sure I can find another way to say this. I’m a comedian,” he said. “You can’t go, No, that’s the way I wrote it and I can’t change it. Well then, how the f—k are you in showbiz?”
Chappelle first came under fire for a series of jokes that many deemed transphobic in 2021’s Netflix special “The Closer.” His 2023 special, “The Dreaming,” also included material centered on the trans community. In his 2022 special, “What’s in a Name?”, Chappelle said of the topic, “The more you say I can’t say something, the more urgent it is for me to say it.”
Listen to Oswalt’s full “We Might Be Drunk” podcast appearance here.
