No apologies. Chevy Chase isn’t losing sleep over accusations that he’s a difficult costar.
The 78-year-old comedian was asked if stories that labeled him as “a jerk” were “unfounded” in a CBS Sunday Morning interview, which aired on Sunday, February 13. “I guess you’d have to ask them. I don’t give a crap!” Chase laughed.
The National Lampoon’s Vacation star didn’t deny any reports of unprofessional behavior on set. He instead emphasized that he doesn’t have any plans to change his demeanor.
“I am who I am,” he said. “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.”
Among the accusations about Chase’s behavior over the years were several reports about alleged racist behavior on the set of Community, the NBC sitcom he starred on from 2009 to 2014.
Dan Harmon, Community creator, claimed that the Manhattan native made racial jokes between takes to Donald Glover.
“Chevy was the first to realize how immensely gifted Donald was, and the way he expressed his jealously was to try to throw Donald off,” Harmon recalled in Glover’s March 2018 cover story for The New Yorker. “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.’”
The executive producer, 49, even alleged that Chase told the Atlanta creator, now 38, “People think you’re funnier because you’re black.”
Current Saturday Night Live star Pete Davidson has also spoken out about the Caddyshack actor’s alleged unprofessional behavior. “He’s a f–king d—bag,” the Staten Island native, now 28, said of the original SNL cast member during a September 2018 interview with Howard Stern on Sirius XM via Deadline. “F–k Chevy Chase. He’s just a genuinely bad, racist person and I don’t like him. He’s a putz.”
The 2002 book Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live featured plenty of on-record interviews with celebrities who took issue with Chase’s behavior. Will Ferrell named him as the “worst host” when the Stars Like Us comic appeared on SNL for a February 1997 episode.
“I don’t know if he was on something or what, if he took too many back pills that day or something, but he was just kind of going around the room and systematically riffing,” Ferrell said in the oral history via the New York Post. “When he got to one of our female writers, he made some reference like, ‘Maybe you can give me a handjob later.’ And I’ve never seen Lorne [Michaels] more embarrassed and red.”
Though SNL welcomed Chase, an original cast member from 1975 to 1977, back for a handful of cameo appearances, he never served as host again.