On the most recent episode of Mark Maron’s WTF podcast, Chevy Chase again addressed his departure from and, more obliquely, his feud with show creator Dan Harmon.
“I honestly felt the show wasn’t funny enough for me, ultimately. I felt a little bit constrained,” he said. “Everybody had their bits, and I thought they were all good. It just wasn’t hard-hitting enough for me.”
Asked specifically about his character, Pierce Hawthorne, Chase replied, “I didn’t mind the character. I just felt that it was… I felt happier being alone. I just didn’t want to be surrounded by that table, every day, with those people. It was too much.”
In a 2022 interview with CBS Sunday Morning, Chase addressed the accusations he was a jerk while working on Saturday Night Live and Community for four seasons. He departed the latter series due to conflicts with Harmon over the direction of his character, an aging tycoon described as a bigot.
“I guess you’d have to ask them. I don’t give a crap!” he said with a laugh when asked how he felt when he heard his former collaborators’ negative takes on working with the SNL icon.
He added, “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.”
In one of Chase’s most controversial outbursts on set, he used the N-word during a particularly heated discussion in 2012 with Harmon regarding his character.
While he didn’t use the word to address his Black cast members, Donald Glover or Yvette Nicole Brown, Deadline reported at the time that the exchange upset the cast.
Asked about his feud with Harmon, Chase said he hasn’t “seen him since” Harmon was dismissed from his role on the show in 2012, ahead of Season 4. “I have no idea if we’re OK,” he continued. “I’ve never been not OK. He’s kind of a pisser.”
Rosy Cordero contributed to this report.
