You could gain all the accolades and high praises in the world, but if it still leaves you empty on the inside, something has to change – a shift needs to happen.
And that’s what took place in Dave Chappelle’s life in the early 2000s. He was at a heightening time in his career, with the success and popularity of Comedy Central’s Chappelle’s Show. His witty humor tackled race relations and really put a microscope on society while physically making your body laugh.
He was smart and woke AF while also fighting to introduce new formats.
The applause came. His star was shining and a life-changing deal of $50-million was offered … and refused.
“It just didn’t feel right,” he contemplatively told CBS This Morning co-host, Gayle King during a candid interview Monday. “I was talkin’ to a guy…he basically said to me that comedy is a reconciliation of paradox. I think that that was a irreconcilable moment for me. That I was in this very successful place, but the emotional content of it didn’t feel anything like what I imagined success should feel like.”
While he was no longer in the spotlight, he escaped to South Africa and found a way to move around and continue doing what he loved sans the hype and noise of Hollywood.
And you can bet, he never stopped working. A result of that being we are now one-day away from Chappelle’s highly anticipated three-part stand up comedy special on Netflix!
Additionally, when talking to King, the comedian also shared some his feelings toward fame and the rumored slight toward Comedy Central’s comedic duo, Key & Peele.
On “Fearing Fame” aka a very tricky beast:
“Fame, yeah, but not so much that I get on a plane to Africa. Fame is not that kind of scary. But it is – fame is a horrifying concept when it’s aimed at you, you know?”
On Key & Peele: Comedy Central’s New “It” duo
“I fought the network very hard so that those conventions could come to fruition. So, like the first episode I do, that Black White supremacist sketch. And it’s like, ‘Well, that’s 10 minutes long. It should be five minutes long.’ Why should it be five minutes long? Like, these types of conventions. I fought very hard. … So when I watch Key & Peele and I see they’re doing a format that I created, and at the end of the show, it says, ‘Created by Key & Peele,’ that hurts my feelings.”
But, even through hurt feelings and faint acknowledgement, Chappelle is a fan of the show. And we are forever fans of Chappelle.
