Joel McHale has been streets ahead of Chevy Chase's insults since 2009

Chase recently addressed his notorious exit from Community by saying the show "wasn't funny enough" for him

By Emma Keates  |  October 12, 2023 | 2:52pm
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Joel McHale has been streets ahead of Chevy Chase's insults since 2009
Chevy Chase and Joel McHale Photo: Frederick M. Brown

On Community, self-professed group leader and once-and-former-lawyer Jeff Winger had a mostly contentious (if sometimes oddly touching) relationship with the group’s resident, semi-racist, crotchety old Reformed Neo Buddhist Pierce Hawthorne. By the end of its buck-wild six-season run, very few events from the hallowed halls of Greendale Community College took place in any universe remotely resembling our own (in the best way possible). The Jeff and Pierce relationship, however, seems to almost directly parallel the real-life antagonism between actors Joel McHale and Chevy Chase.

Late last month, Chase—who was notoriously expelled from the show for allegedly using the N-word on set in 2012—attempted to rewrite the story last month by suggesting that the show actually wasn’t “funny” or “hard-hitting” enough for him. “I didn’t mind the character. I just felt that it was—I felt happier being alone. I just didn’t want to be surrounded by that table, every day, with those people. It was too much,” he continued, mirroring a refrain oft-heard from his fictional counterpart.

Joel McHale—who is set to step back into Jeff’s overly tight pants for the long-gestating, Pierce-less Community movie—is unbothered by the dig from his former study buddy. “He stopped hurting my feelings in 2009,” the Animal Control star recently told People.

“I was like, ‘Hey, no one was keeping you there,’” he continued, in response to Chase’s apparent dislike for the show’s set and all of his cast mates. “I mean, we weren’t sentenced to that show. It was like, ‘All right, you could have left if you really wanted that.’ But yeah, you know Chevy. That’s Chevy being Chevy.”

“I was like, ‘Hey, the feeling’s mutual, bud,’” he concluded. We guess, at least in McHale’s mind, Chevy Chase really is a no-good B.

 
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