“Community” star Joel McHale didn’t take Chevy Chase’s recent comments dissing the cast and show as not being “funny enough” for him sitting down.
“The feeling’s mutual, bud,” he said in an interview with People published Wednesday, adding, that Chase “could have left.”
“I mean, we weren’t sentenced to that show,” McHale, who starred on the series from 2009 to 2015, said. “It was like, ‘All right, you could have left if you really wanted that.’ But yeah, you know Chevy. That’s Chevy being Chevy… I wrote about this in my book, but I was like, ‘Hey, the feeling’s mutual, bud.’”
On Maron’s “WTF” podcast, Chase described the show as being not “funny enough” or “hard-hitting enough” for him.
“I honestly felt like the show wasn’t funny enough for me, ultimately. I felt a little bit constrained,” Chase, 80, told Maron. “Everybody had their bits, and I thought they were all good. It just wasn’t hard-hitting enough for me.”
“I didn’t mind the character. I just felt that it was… I felt happier being alone,” Chase added about his character millionaire Pierce Hawthorne. “I just didn’t want to be surrounded by that table, every day, with those people. It was too much.”
Chase exited the NBC comedy series after using a racial slur on set. He has said he had no ill will against creator Dan Harmon for taking him out of the show. In the series first four seasons, his character went back to community college with young classmates portrayed by Donald Glover, Alison Brie and Yvette Nicole Brown in addition to McHale.
In his 2016 memoir “Thanks for the Money: How to Use My Life Story to Become the Best Joel McHale You Can Be,” McHale described the tension between the two actors as well as the racist terms and jokes about sexual assault that Chevy said on set. McHale has also reiterated the story of an on-set argument he had with Chase, during which he accidentally dislocated Chase’s shoulder.
