‘Community’ Creator Dan Harmon: I Don’t Know If it’s ‘Legal’ for Chevy Chase to Reprise Role

Samantha Bergeson
·4 min read
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Chevy Chase is no longer part of the “Community” community.

Series creator Dan Harmon discussed the possibility of Chase reprising his role from the original NBC series for the upcoming Peacock film. “I don’t even know if it’s legal for him to come back,” Harmon said during a moderated New York Comic Con discussion (via Variety). “That may be out of my hands. There may something I sign for with an insurance company.”

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“Community” debuted in 2009 and centered on a dysfunctional community college, with Chase, Joel McHale, Danny Pudi, Donald Glover, Alison Brie, Gillian Jacobs, and Yvette Nicole Brown as students. Jim Rash and Ken Jeong played school administrators. Chase, Brown, and Glover were not tagged in lead star McHale’s social media post announcing the film after a years-long #SixSeasonsandaMovie campaign.

Dan Harmon and Andrew Guest will write and executive produce the movie.

“He was a great ‘Community’ writer in the…I don’t want to say the peak days, but there was classic ‘Community.’ He wrote the ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ episode,” Harmon said. “He’s going to help me make sure that I don’t pull a Harmon with that script getting executed so that we can actually deliver it and start shooting it.”

A director is not yet attached.

“‘Six seasons and a movie’ started out as a cheeky line from ‘Community’s early seasons and quickly ignited a passionate fan movement for this iconic, hilarious and cool (cool, cool) NBC comedy,” Susan Rovner, chairman, entertainment content, NBCUniversal Television and Streaming said. “We’re incredibly grateful that 15 years later, we are able to deliver fans this promised movie and can’t wait to get to work with Dan Harmon, Andrew Guest, Joel McHale, Sony and our partners at UTV to continue this epic comedy for Peacock audiences.”

Harmon also noted to Variety that Glover is most likely returning. “I think that Donald is coming, based on word of mouth, but it’s just the deal isn’t official or wasn’t official. It would be difficult to really commit to doing this thing without Donald,” Harmon said. “So I believe he is coming back. I think if there’s names missing from a list, it’s because the names that are on the list, their deals are agreed upon enough that it’s OK to say they are on the list, and anybody that’s not on a list, it’s just not the case yet. So there is nothing official about anybody being out”

Chase allegedly made racist comments toward “Community” co-star Glover, who later went on to create the critically acclaimed FX series “Atlanta.”

“Chevy was the first to realize how immensely gifted Donald was, and the way he expressed his jealousy was to try to throw Donald off,” Harmon told The New Yorker in 2018. “I remember apologizing to Donald after a particularly rough night of Chevy’s non-P.C. verbiage, and Donald said, ‘I don’t even worry about it.'”

Glover added, “I just saw Chevy as fighting time — a true artist has to be OK with his reign being over. I can’t help him if he’s thrashing in the water. But I know there’s a human in there somewhere — he’s almost too human.”

Chase said in February 2022 that he doesn’t “give a crap” about the rumors swirling his “Community” exit after four seasons on the series. “I am who I am. And I like where— who I am. I don’t care. And it’s part of me that I don’t care,” Chase said on CBS’ “Sunday Morning” (via Deadline). “And I’ve thought about that a lot. And I don’t know what to tell you, man. I just don’t care.”

Chase was also not asked to return for a cameo role for “Confess, Fletch,” a reimagined revival of the novel adaptation that previously starred him.

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