‘No One Was Keeping You There’: Joel McHale Says That Chevy Chase’s Hard Feelings Toward the ‘Community’ Cast Are Completely Mutual

Chevy Chase recently claimed that he left his last steady gig at Community because the show was beneath him. Joel McHale just clapped back by saying that nothing is beneath the bottom of the barrel.

Last month, Chase appeared on WTF with Marc Maron to claim that his acrimonious and well-publicized removal from the cast of Community in 2012 was, actually, a prudent decision on his part to move on, because, “I felt the show wasn't funny enough for me, ultimately. … 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." Over the last decade, the circumstances surrounding the split have been well-detailed by the Community cast and crew, with recent reports from those on set revealing that Chase was fired on the spot after dropping an N-bomb in the middle of production, marking the straw that broke the racist dinosaur’s back. Chase’s revisionist take on the situation was quickly noted by those familiar with the facts of the matter, and, in a recent interview with People, McHale set the record straight about his former co-star’s “You can’t fire me, I quit!” claims.

“I was like, ‘Hey, no one was keeping you there,’” McHale said of his immediate reaction to Chase’s derisive comments, “I mean, we weren't sentenced to that show.” After all, no judge would force anyone to work with Chevy Chase given our country’s rules on cruel and unusual punishment.

“It was like, ‘All right, you could have left if you really wanted that,’” McHale said of Chase’s claims that he was the one who broke up with Community and not the other way around. “But yeah, you know Chevy. That's Chevy being Chevy.” McHale added that Chase’s comments about wanting to get away from “those people” didn’t sting the way the 80-year-old former star probably hoped.  Said McHale, “I was like, ‘Hey, the feeling's mutual, bud.’” 

“He stopped hurting my feelings in 2009,” McHale admitted. After working with Chase for four seasons, McHale and the rest of the remaining Community cast members are all-too-familiar with Chase’s proclivity for public attacks. As McHale and the rest of the Community study group prepare to finally film the show’s long-awaited movie adaptation, they will be gladly absent their most difficult and abusive coworker.

As McHale so eloquently put it when the film was announced last year, the Chase-less Community movie will be “a family reunion but without a-holes.”