By all reports, Chevy Chase has always been a nightmare to work with, and it looks as though age hasn’t slowed him a bit.
Massive ego and massive insecurity do not make for a pleasant personality.
I do think that this tape (from March of 2011) is a little over-hyped. Chase is mainly complaining about what’s happening in the editing room and not about his fellow cast members, although he is obviously looking for more of the spotlight to shine on him. Chase is clearly frustrated and feels as though he was hired to do one thing and is seeing another pop up in the end product.
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This is no joke: Chevy Chase doesn’t think his NBC show Community is funny — at all.
In a second and more candid audio recording of Chase, obtained exclusively by Celebuzz, the veteran actor is caught on tape ripping the prime-time program that he helped build, admitting to the show’s creator Dan Harmon: “It’s just a f*cking mediocre sitcom! I want people to laugh and this isn’t funny.”
An angry Chase added, “It ain’t funny to me because I’m 67-years-old and I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ve been making a lot of people laugh — a lot better than this.”
You can listen to the voicemail exclusively on Celebuzz in the audio above.
The release of the recording is a potentially fatal blow to the beleaguered series that is already reeling from an all-time series ratings low last week, totaling just 3.1 million viewers nationwide.
NBC is yet to confirm if Community will even be back for a fourth season and after the release of this audio, it seems improbable that Chase — and his spacey senior student character Pierce — will be back, even if the sitcom does return.
Though Harmon apologized for making the first voicemail public at a comedy show, this second recording demonstrates just how deep is their wound and long-running the feud.
On the voicemail, purportedly from March 2011, Harmon can be heard deriding his high-priced star in front of an audience of “stunned” production executives who were “shocked that it was being played to them… as an apparent joke,” according to a source who was there and who spoke to Celebuzz on the condition of anonymity.
Full story here.