Donald Glover jokes about Chevy Chase calling him the N-Word

When Donald Glover stopped by the WGA Awards in New York City on Sunday night to present NewsRadio creator and Paul Simms with the Herb Sargent Award for Excellence in Comedy, he found time to take a few jabs at his famous sense of unease. “Community” co-star Chevy Chase. Glover has been open for years about Chase’s racist behavior toward him on the set of the NBC show, which he alluded to in his speech honoring Simms.

“This award is named after Herb Sargent, a writer who worked on ‘Saturday Night Live’ and came up with ‘Weekend Update’ with Chevy Chase,” Glover said at the beginning of his speech. “Chevy Chase once called Herb one of the funniest writers working in television. And Chevy Chase called me once…you know, it’s about Paul.

Due to his long hiatus from comedy, many believed he was referring to Chase, who called him the N-word. If anyone had any doubts about that, they were erased when Glover brought up Chase again in an anecdote from the set of “Girls” (which Simms also produced).

“I was on the set of Girls after shooting a sex scene for eight hours,” Glover said. “What was cut down to two minutes, the rest of the footage I have never seen. Afterwards, I asked Lena, ‘Gee, what made you decide to work with Paul?'” And she says, “Honestly, it’s… it allows me to do what I want to do.” And I remember thinking two things. One, Lena, uses the N word extremely liberally. Who do you think you are, Chevy Chase? And two: I want a producer like that.”

Glover’s comments about Lena Dunham using anti-black racial slurs to describe Simms (who is white) were almost certainly loud — but Chase probably wasn’t. In a 2018 interview, Glover and “Community” creator Dan Harmon both spoke out about Chase’s racist behavior.

“Chevy was the first to realize how extremely talented Donald was, and he expressed his jealousy by trying to knock Donald down,” Harmon said. “I remember apologizing to Donald after a particularly rough night when Chevy made some non-PC slurs and Donald said, ‘I’m not even worried about that.’

“I just saw Chevy as fighting time,” Glover added. “A true artist has to be okay with the fact that his reign is over. I can’t help it if it’s floundering in the water. But I know there’s a human out there somewhere—almost too human.

Reporting by Samantha Bergeson.

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