Chevy Chase Used To Make “Racial Cracks” At Donald Glover Behind The Scenes Of ‘Community’

With the premiere of Atlanta: Robbin’ Season later this week, the New Yorker has just published a huge profile on the prolific creator that is Donald Glover, and it’s … something. Throughout the interview, Glover is surprisingly frank as the piece calmly calls out everything from Lena Dunham’s stumbling inclusion of Glover on Girls to Glover using a “white translator” to convince FX to make his show. However, one of the most shocking revelations is buried more than halfway into the story. Apparently the set of Community was more strained than we already believed.

In the piece, Donald Glover’s five years on Community are condensed down to just a paragraph, starting with the revelation that Chevy Chase used to make “racial cracks” to Glover between scenes. One of the racist jabs Chase allegedly said was, “People think you’re funnier because you’re black.”

Show creator Dan Harmon expounded on the feud and Glover’s response to it:

Harmon said, “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. 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.’ ”

When asked about Chase’s discrimination, Glover, true to form, brushed profile writer Tad Friend off:

“I just saw Chevy as fighting time — a true artist has to be O.K. with his reign being over. 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 was also reached for comment about the claims and said, “I am saddened to hear that Donald perceived me in that light.” This is far from the first time Chase has been accused of being difficult on the Community set. Harmon notoriously got into a huge fight with the star, which led to Chase storming off. There’s also reason to believe that Community co-star Joel McHale and Chase have a bit of a sometimes-friendly rivalry, something that was alluded to by McHale’s casting in A Futile and Stupid Gesture.

The New Yorker profile concludes that Glover eventually quit Community because he was “too bored to do it anymore.” The entire article is an engaging and interesting reflection of this brilliant creator is as well as the unique and often painful challenges of being black in the entertainment industry. You can (and should) read the piece in full here.

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