Featured Image Credit: CNN
Topics: Celebrity, Film and TV
Phoebe Tonks
Saturday Night Live alumnus Chevy Chase has savagely shut down a journalist while insisting he’s ‘not racist’ after a documentary about his life aired on CNN.
I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not aired on January 1, and explores the comedian’s rise to fame, including the highs, lows, and complexities of everything along the way.
The film, which is directed by Marina Zenovich, featured a number of candid interactions, including the moment she told him: “I’m just trying to figure you out.”
This prompted a reply from Chase, in which he bluntly responded: “No s***, it’s not going to be easy for you.”
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“Why is it not going to be easy?” Zenovich questioned, prompting a savage response from Chase as he declared: “You’re not bright enough, how’s that?”
The rude response left Zenovich virtually speechless, as she could only exclaim “Whoa!” in response to the blunt remark.
“Well, you asked. I know you’re not going to put that on the air, and I hope not,” Chase continued. “But my answer is I’m complex, and I’m deep, and I can be hurt easily, and I react spontaneously to people who want to figure me out, as it were. As somebody who will hold up my guard, I’m not going to let anybody figure me out, per se.”
Reflecting on the experience after filming and prior to the documentary’s release, Zenovich admitted she had ‘never done an interview with someone so rude’ before – but this was precisely why it was important to her.
“I was so worried going into that first interview with him about how I was going to say to him, like, ‘Everyone thinks you’re an asshole.’ I thought if I did, he would throw me out of his house. So the minute he said that to me, I had a way in, “ she told Variety on December 28.
Despite his attitude, however, Zenovich was keen to show the real Chase to the world, flaws and all – and that even meant addressing his controversial exit from Community in 2012.
Chase left the hit comedy show after four series, after allegedly using the N-word on the set while speaking to co-star Yvette Nicole Brown.
With the resurfacing of the incident having been broached in the new documentary, Chase recently insisted to The New York Times that he ‘isn’t racist’ and argued that he had been ‘misunderstood’.
He said: “It was too great a misunderstanding of what I was saying and not saying. I thought that there was at least one person — and another who, for some ungodly reason, didn’t get me, didn’t know who I was, or didn’t realize for one second I’m not racist.
“They were too young to be aware of my work. Instead, there was some sort of visceral reaction from them.”