Though actor Channing Tatum appreciates Dave Chappelle’s work as a comedian, he expressed sorrow for how Chappelle has “hurt so many people.”
In an Instagram story post on Sunday, Tatum acknowledged the danger of talking about Chappelle before calling his comedy routine hurtful.
“I understand that Dave Chappelle is a very dangerous person to talk about at the moment. I understand and hate that he has hurt so many people with the things he has said,” Tatum began.
Tatum then included to Chappelle’s 2019 speech at the Kennedy Center to accept the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, saying his words helped him at the time.
“Any human can hurt someone (usually cause they’re hurt) but any human can heal and heal others just the same. This little piece healed me back in the day. I can’t forget that,” Tatum said.
“This does not excuse anything hurtful [though] to be clear,” he added.
In the clip, Chappelle talked about how his mother helped him overcome sensitivity as a kid, advising him to behave like a lion to be a lamb.
I was a soft kid. I was sensitive, I’d cry easy and I would be scared to fistfight. My mother used to tell me this thing… ’Son, sometimes you have to be a lion so you can be the lamb you really are.’ I talk this s**t like a lion. I’m not afraid of any of you. When it comes word to word, I will gab with the best of them, just so I can chill and be me.
And that’s why I love my art form, because I understand every practitioner of it. Whether I agree with them or not, I know where they’re coming from. They want to be heard. They’ve got something to say. There’s something they noticed. They just want to be understood. I loved this genre. It saved my life.
Watch below:
As Breitbart’s John Nolte previously noted, Hollywood has resisted the push to cancel Dave Chappelle following his Netflix special The Closer, in which he made multiple jokes mocking the LGBTQ community for its tyrannical stranglehold on free speech.
Despite the outrage from radical leftists, including those within its own company, Netflix has stood by Dave Chappelle, with co-CEO Ted Sarandos defending the comedian’s right to artistic expression. In defiance, transgender employees at Netflix have organized a company-wide walkout this week demanding that the special be taken off the platform.
“Trans Lives Matter. Trans Rights Matter. And as an organization, Netflix has continually failed to show deep care in our mission to Entertain the World by repeatedly releasing content that harms the Trans community and continually failing to create content that represents and uplifts Trans content,” the group said in a statement.