Jerrod Carmichael, whose excellent new HBO series will soon premiere its second episode, reflects on his widely headlined Dave Chappelle comments in a new interview.
Speaking with Dave Holmes for Esquire, Carmichael made his way to the Chappelle reflection while discussing how coming out as gay is still “scary” for many, including himself, due in part to people still being prone to “laugh at it and mock it.” He says Chappelle, for example, mocked his Emmy-winning Rothaniel special, which saw Carmichael coming out and discussing how his family and others in his life had initially reacted.
“He referred to it as the bravest special for 1996,” Carmichael told Holmes in the digital cover story, available in full here. “And it’s like, that’s a funny enough line, whatever, but I wonder if he gets the irony that the fact that you are mocking it even then is why it was hard.”
In 2022, Carmichael called out Chappelle’s bizarre fascination with pushing a rhetoric under the guise of comedy that many have criticized as being transphobic.
“Your legacy is a bunch of opinions on trans shit? It’s an odd hill to die on,” Carmichael told Frazier Tharpe at the time.
In the new Holmes chat, Carmichael says “egomaniac” Chappelle was looking for a public apology for the remarks.
“I said he’s not revealing anything personal about himself and he’s removed from what he’s talking about, and I think he’s smarter than that and deeper than that and has more interesting thoughts,” Carmichael said. “But he took it as fuck Dave Chappelle, because he’s an egomaniac. He wanted me to apologize to him publicly or some shit.”
Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show premiered at this year's SXSW Film & TV Festival in Austin. The series is arguably unlike anything else on TV and sees Carmichael further exploring his post-Rothaniel family dynamic. Romantic relationships are also explored with a daring sense of vulnerability, as is the undeniable impact of placing a camera in front of someone during truly intimate conversations.
Ahead of the premiere of the second episode, Carmichael stopped by Seth Meyers' Late Night. See that below.
As for what's next for Carmichael, who was recently a part of the Oscar-winning cast of Poor Things, this writer would like the respective Powers That Be to strongly consider the comedian to host the 2025 Oscars.
