Chevy Chase used to make racist comments to Donald Glover, so Pierce isn't invited to the prophesied "Community" movie
It’s not shocking to hear news stories about how working with Chevy Chase is difficult. And these stories aren’t just from the past decade. Apparently, Chase, an iconic comedic actor, has made enemies on almost every job he’s had in Hollywood for his entire career, and most of his feuds have been public. His time on Saturday Night Live was riddled with fights and toxic behavior, and even the way he left seemed pretty controversial. His fight with Community creator Dan Harmon was legendary for how bad it got. But it turns out he was also making life difficult on the set of Community for Donald Glover, which is unacceptable.
Beloved by all, Glover is basically the internet’s favorite boyfriend (which is saying a lot, because the internet has *a lot* of boyfriends). So if you’re horrible to Glover, you’re horrible to us all. And apparently Chase was really, really horrible to Glover during filming, so, if you ask us, he’s definitely not invited to the Community movie (should it ever actually happen). In a new profile with Glover for The New Yorker ahead of Atlanta‘s Season 2 premiere, the actor revealed that Chase constantly made racist comments toward him.
According to the profile, Chase would apparently try to throw off Glover’s scenes by making racist “jokes” to and about him in-between takes. “People think you’re funnier because you’re black,” Chase allegedly said once. Yikes.
For his part, Harmon attributed Chase’s problematic behavior to his jealousy over seeing how talented Glover was at that early stage in his career. “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. “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.'”
And because Glover is such a class act, he really meant it: “I just saw Chevy as fighting time — a true artist has to be O.K. with his reign being over,” Glover said. “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.”
After hearing this, Chase replied with the most non-apologetic statement ever: “I am saddened to hear that Donald perceived me in that light.” He doesn’t say he’s sorry he used racism to bait a coworker, or that he hurt anyone’s feelings, or caused disturbances on set during filming. He’s just “saddened” to hear someone thought of him in that way. It’s no wonder why Glover quit Community in Season 5 to move on to better things. But if the Community movie does ever happen, here’s to hoping that Pierce is nowhere to be seen and Troy and Abed are reunited in a much happier and kind atmosphere.