Community creator Dan Harmon has branded the show’s former star Chevy Chase a “befuddled old man”.
Chase quit Community last November (2012) after a three-and-half-year stint on the US sitcom, having squabbled with Harmon on set and in press interviews. Chase, who played bored millionaire Pierce Hawthorne in the acclaimed series, had also claimed that joining the show in the first place was a “mistake”. “It’s still a sitcom on television, which is probably the lowest form of television,” Chase said in one interview.
Now Harmon has spoken about his time working with Chase in an extensive new interview feature with The Hollywood Reporter.
“[Chevy is] a befuddled old man, but he’s also the guy who calls you to his trailer and shakes the script in the air and says: ‘I’m not a befuddled old man! I’m sexy! I could be the star of this show! I’m not gay. You’re writing me as if I’m gay’,” Harmon recalled.
“I’d say to him, ‘Do you understand that what you’re saying is funny and it makes an interesting character?’ He would kind of blink and stare at me and go, ‘Whatever, I just don’t think it’s funny’.”
In the same interview feature, Chase apparently claims that he and Harmon are now “friends again”, before adding: “He’s brilliant and can be very funny. The reason I wanted to do the show in the first place was Dan’s writing. And I stand by that. But I have to go now, I’m very busy writing Community‘s Ice Capades Extravaganza.”
The new season of Community will premiere on US network NBC early next year (2014). The cult comedy series revolves around a motley crew of adult students at a community college in the fictional town of Greendale, Colorado.
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