Donald Glover brought up Chevy Chase’s alleged use of the N-word on the set of Community while presenting Atlanta executive producer Paul Simms with an honorary award at the Writers Guild Awards on Sunday.
Glover mentioned that Simms was receiving an accolade named after former Saturday Night Live writer Herb Sargent, who co-created the Weekend Update segment with Chase.
“Chevy Chase once called Herb one of the funniest writers working in television,” Glover said at the 1:40 mark above. “Chevy Chase once called me—you know what, this is about Paul.”
Glover went on to recall his brief stint on the HBO series Girls, which was co-executive produced by Simms. “I was on the set of Girls after filming a sex scene for like eight hours, which they cut down to two minutes,” Donald said. “I’ve never seen any of the rest of that footage.”
“I asked Lena [Dunham], ‘Hey, what made you decide to work with Paul [Simms]?’ And she goes ‘Honestly, this n***a lets me do whatever I want,’” Glover continued. “And I remember thinking two things. One, Lena is using the N-word extremely liberally. Who does she think she is, Chevy Chase? And two, that’s the kind of producer I want.”
A rep for Dunham released a statement to the Los Angeles Times, saying Glover’s remark about her was a joke, while also denying she ever said the N-word.
“Donald Glover told a joke referencing Lena Dunham for last night’s WGA Awards,” the statement reads. “It included, for effect, language Lena never used, nor would use.”
A 2012 report from The Hollywood Reporter alleged Chase once apologized to the Community cast and crew for using the N-word in the presence of Glover and Yvette Nicole Brown during an outburst on set over growing frustration with his character.
In a 2018 New Yorker profile about Glover, Community creator Dan Harmon remembered apologizing to the Atlanta creator after a “particularly rough night of Chevy’s non-P.C. verbiage.” The magazine alleges a jealous Chase would try to disrupt Glover’s scenes by making “racial cracks” between takes.
After Chase criticized Saturday Night Live, then-cast member Pete Davidson appeared on The Howard Stern Show on SiriusXM and called him “a genuinely bad, racist person,” adding, “I don’t like him.”
