Donald Glover Jokes About Chevy Chase's Use of N-Word in WGA Awards Speech

When Donald Glover stopped by the WGA Awards in New York to present "NewsRadio" creator and "Atlanta" executive producer Paul Simms with the Herb Sargent Award for Excellence in Comedy on Sunday night , he found time to give Chevy Chase, his famously obnoxious "community" co-star, a few shots. For years, Glover has been open about Chase's racist behavior towards him on the set of the NBC show, which he alluded to during his speech honoring Simms.

“This award was named after Herb Sargent, a writer who worked on 'Saturday Night Live' and came up with the 'Weekend Update' with Chevy Chase,'” Glover said at the start of his talk. "Chevy Chase once called Herb one of the funniest writers working on TV. And Chevy Chase called me one day…you know, it's about Paul.

His long comic hiatus led many to believe he was referring to Chase calling him the N-word. If anyone had any doubts about that, they were cleared when Glover brought up again Chase in an anecdote about the set of "Girls" (which Simms also produced).

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"I was on the set of 'Girls' after filming a sex scene for about eight hours," Glover said. "Which they cut down to two minutes, I never saw the rest of that footage. Then I asked Lena, 'Yo, what made you decide to work with Paul?' "And she said 'honestly, this n - lets me do what I want. One, Lena uses the N-word extremely liberally. Who does she think she is, Chevy Chase? And two, that's kind of producer I want.

Glover's comments about Lena Dunham using anti-black racial slurs to describe Simms (who is white) were almost certainly ironic — but her feelings about Chase probably weren't. In a 2018 interview, Glover and "Community" creator Dan Harmon both spoke out about Chase's racist behavior.

"Chevy was the first to realize how immensely gifted Donald was, and the way he expressed his jealousy was trying to get rid of Donald," Harmon said. "I remember apologizing to Donald after a particularly rough night of non-P.C. Chevy verbiage, and Donald said, 'I don't even care.'”

"I just saw Chevy as a fight time," Glover added. "A real artist has to be okay with the end of his reign. I can't help it if he's struggling in the water. But I know there's a human in there somewhere, he is almost too human."

Reporting by Samantha Bergeson.

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