Community: Donald Glover Drops Chevy Chase Joke at WGAs (VIDEO)

Over the past few weeks, most of our updates on the Dan Harmon-created Community have focused on Joel McHale (Jeff), Gillian Jacobs (Britta), Danny Pudi (Abed), Alison Brie (Annie), Ken Jeong (Ben Chang), and Jim Rash (Craig Pelton) reuniting for a long-awaited movie for Peacock. But this one deals with two members of the popular series’ cast who (at least as of this writing) aren’t part of the reunion, Donald Glover and Chevy Chase. As Community fans know all too well, Chase’s time with the series wasn’t exactly a smooth one, with members of the cast & crew accusing the actor/comedian of inappropriate conduct on the set.

In one previously-reported incident from 2012, Chase was engaged in a heated back-and-forth with Harmon over his character, Pierce. The incident allegedly came down to his disagreement over lines being fed to him that Chase reportedly found offensive (Pierce is described as a bigot), which led to an outburst on Chase’s part where he vented that he felt like he was going to be asked to use the N-word (except Chase used the word) at Troy (Glover) and Shirley (Yvette Nicole Brown). It was also reported that while the N-word was allegedly not used directly toward Glover or Brown, the cast was still reportedly upset by the exchange. Flash ahead to March 2023 and Sunday night’s The 75th Writers Guild of America (WGA) Awards, with Glover dropping a joke regarding Chase & the N-word while presenting Paul Simms (Girls, Atlanta, What We Do in the Shadows) with the WGA’s Herb Sargent Award for Comedy Excellence.

In the following video clip from Variety, we see Glover sharing with the audience a story about the time he spoke with Lena Dunham about what it was like working with Simms while filming HBO’s Girls (with a great line about eight hours of sex scene filming resulted in only two minutes making the screen, with Glover wondering what happened to the rest of the footage). Glover said that Dunham explained that Simms lets her do anything she wants… but began her response to Glover by referring to Simms with the N-word. And that’s when Glover commented that Dunham’s response had him thinking two things – with his first observation tying to Chase and Community. Glover’s first thought was that Dunham was using the N-word very liberally around him, and that’s when he dropped the line, “Who does she think she is? Chevy Chase?” (getting laughs & a strong response from the crowd). Here’s a look at the clip:

In an interview with CBS Sunday Morning from February 2022, Chase responded to accusations about his on-set conduct while filming the NBC & Netflix series. And from the sounds of things, he’s moved on and wasn’t thinking much about it. “I guess you’d have to ask them. I don’t give a crap!” Chase said with a laugh during the interview after being asked how he felt about the accusations his co-stars have made over the years. ” I am who I am. And I like where— who I am. I don’t care. And it’s part of me that I don’t care. And I’ve thought about that a lot. And I don’t know what to tell you, man. I just don’t care,” Chase added.

During the previous year, McHale opened up about what the Community experience was like when he checked in with Michael Rosenbaum‘s (Smallville, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) Inside of You podcast. Specifically, what it was like working with Chase and the incidents with him on set. In the following clip, McHale explains that he believes Chase wasn’t a fan of the hours needed to produce each episode that would result in “not great moods” and times when production schedules were shifted to attempt to accommodate. He also discussed Chase’s departure under “quite crazy circumstances,” that “it could be tough some days; other days, great,” and more: