Donald Glover Insinuates That Chevy Chase Called Him A Racial Slur While Filming 'Community'

Donald Glover is insinuating that Chevy Chase called him a racial slur when they when worked together on Community.

The actor had the honor of presenting at the 2023 Writers Guild Award earlier this week. He presented producer Paul Simmons with the Herb Sargent Award for Comedy Excellence.

During his speech about the current Atlanta executive producer, he brought up that both he and Sargent have worked with Chase. Glover on Community and Sargent back when he created the “Weekend Update” segment for the popular sketch show.

In an awkward moment, Glover joked. “Chevy Chase once called Herb one of the funniest writers working in television. Chevy Chase once called me – You know what? This is about Paul.”

The actor swiftly kept his speech moving but the room filled with laughter.

In 2009 when Chase joined the cast of Community, Glover was a main cast member and went on to be the breakout star of the show. Glover admits that working with Chase was challenging as the archaic actor would make some less-than-savory jokes regarding Glover’s skin color.

The New Yorker profiled the show in 2018 and it came up that Chase had said to Glover on set, “People think you’re funnier because you’re Black.” This prompted the creator of the show Dan Harmon to apologize to Glover.

He alleged that Chase’s behavior is due to jealousy of the much more talented Glover. “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,” he told the publication.

Harmon shared that he also remembers, “apologizing to Donald after a particularly rough night of Chevy’s non-P.C. verbiage,” and of course, “Donald said, ‘I don’t even worry about it,’” realizing that Chase is low-key a ridiculous person and knows better.

Glover took the moments with a grain of salt and told The New Yorker in the same interview. “I just saw Chevy as fighting time—a true artist has to be O.K. with his reign being over,” says Glover confidently.

Glover went on to say, “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.”

The actor also joked about actress Lena Dunham using the racial slur regularly while on the set of Girls. During the talk that lasted almost eight minutes, he said: “I asked Lena ... ‘Hey, what made you decide to work with Paul?’ And she goes, ‘Honestly, this n— let’s me do whatever I want.’”

Some people laughed but it felt awkward even as we watched it. He continued recalling the moment, “I remember thinking two things: One, Lena is using the N-word extremely liberal with me. Who does she think she is, Chevy Chase? ... And two, that’s the kind of producer I want.”

A member of Lena’s team has come out to deny the accusation against her and even said it was a joke gone bad essentially.

The quote was given to the L.A. Times. “Donald Glover told a joke referencing Lena Dunham for last night’s WGA Awards, it included, for effect, language Lena never used, nor would use.”