Dave Chappelle‘s comeback is fixin’ to be as controversial as his exit from entertainment in 2005.
Dream Team: A Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock comedy tour?
The guy ghosted Hollywood right when it seemed he was at the peak of his comedic success with his sketch series, Chappelle’s Show, but has been steadily inching his way back into the business for several years now.
While we are all about a good comeback story, from the sounds of Chappelle’s recently outlined plot to get him to return to the top, it doesn’t sound like he’s taking the Britney Spears route back to good graces.
Dave Chappelle and Flight of the Conchords to tour together
Chappelle gave a laundry list of shows that he would like to be on to spur his career revival and he has some very specific story lines for the characters he would like to play. “I’d be a zombie in The WalkingDead, a corpse in CSI,” he said in a recent interview with GQ magazine. “I’d be the first black guy to f*** Olivia Pope on Scandal.”
While we don’t doubt that Chappelle has the chops to play all of the parts he named, we can’t help but wince at the Olivia Pope joke. Did he really have to go there and did it get any laughs? Not to mention the fact that the role of the “first black guy to f*** Olivia Pope on Scandal” was already booked and played by Norm Lewis in Season 2. Hopefully, Chappelle does more homework before going out on auditions.
In addition to the sexist and racist undertones in his comeback scheme, it also turns out that Donald Sterling has an unlikely supporter in Chappelle. “Ultimately, I don’t think he should have lost his team,” Chappelle said. “I don’t like the idea that someone can record a secret conversation and that person could lose their assets from that, even though I think what he said was awful. When you think about the intimacy of the situation, like, can a man just chill with his mistress in peace?” OK, the mistress comment is a little funny.
We also know that Chappelle is all about satire and sarcasm, so it’s always just a little bit hard to tell when he’s being serious or if he’s deliberately being outlandish. He is a comedian at the end of the day.
I'm off to the gym. Replacing good character with good looks is a cornerstone of my comeback stratagem. (sarcasm)
— David Chappelle (@DaveChappelle) March 21, 2012
As questionable as his jokes may be, we do appreciate one thing about Chappelle: He’s got a work ethic and is willing to work his way back to where he was. “I want to do this thing where I guest star on as many television shows as I possibly can,” he told GQ. “I love television. The fact that television ultimately made me famous was very gratifying for me.”
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