Dave’s on a roll
Comedian talks about Trump, Cosby and his two new Netflix stand-up specials
Whether lambasting racial inequity with his trademark eccentricity, or putting on a Jheri curl wig for a now-legendary parody of Rick James, Dave Chappelle has long been considered one of the most exciting stand-ups in comedy. But he hasn’t issued a special or album since his infamous decision to walk away from the critically acclaimed
Chappelle’s Show on Comedy Central — and a $50 million (Dh183.5 million) contract — in 2005.
He re-emerged in the spotlight in 2013, rekindling his love of stand-up in what one critic called “magnetically compelling” sets in a variety of spaces: comedy clubs, festivals and 10 soldout shows at Radio City Music Hall. Stand-up, the medium that first made Chappelle famous, was again his life’s work. On Tuesday he releases two new specials on Netflix, Deep in the Heart of
Texas and The Age of Spin, culled from a 2015 performance in Austin and a 2016 show in Los Angeles.
In an interview that touched on the death of Prince and his conflicted feelings about Bill Cosby, Chappelle spoke by phone on Thursday about his contract with Netflix. You caught flak for walking away from a lucrative TV deal more than a decade ago. Now Netflix is reportedly paying you $60 million to air these two prerecorded stand-up performances and create a brand-new third one. It wasn’t like I made a deal and had to go out
And you’ll be releasing another brand-new special for Netflix this year as part of the three special deal. Yeah. I’m working on that now.
Not a bad deal. Do you have other unreleased shows still in the vault?
I have hundreds of hours of high-quality audio recording of shows I did after I quit my television show. And then I [taped] three specials — one in Chicago, one in Austin, and one in LA. Oh, and I also recorded the Radio City shows.
These specials showcase a comedian who is reinvigorated by stand-up comedy.
I could quit my show, and that’s one kind of difficulty. But quitting doing stand-up would be another. I’m sure everybody gets to a point where they run out of [stuff] to say, and they’ve got to take a knee and recharge and be introspective and live their life. But it’s hard to not ever come back to. Guys might walk away from it and close the door, but they don’t lock it behind. Eddie Murphy always entertains the possibility of doing it again. Even though he doesn’t do it, I’m sure he thinks about it all the time. It’s just one of those things where you’ll do it for 10 years, and then you’ll think about it for the next 30.
Many of your contemporaries are still performing.
It kind of reminds me of the ‘90s: Chris [Rock] is back out there, I see Jerry [Seinfeld] around, I hear Jon Stewart is around again. All these people who are great comics that stopped doing stand-up. It’s fun to see everybody back. It’s a good time for comedy in that respect. But the whole Trump thing makes it harder for comedians.
How so? He’s so skewed, it’s hard to find an angle that sounds fresh. If you talk about him, it’s almost like you’re part of the chorus and not a soloist.
You famously parodied Prince on your TV show. How did you react when you learnt of his passing? It’s a hard thing to talk about. I looked up to him like everybody did. I didn’t know him that well, but the times that we hung out were fun and very memorable and often funny. He was very generous with his advice, and he was very generous with his access. He let me see some of his process. He fostered a community among artists.
As someone who idolised Bill Cosby as a child, it’s surprising you dedicate so much time in both specials to the rape allegations against him.
The Bill Cosby thing was tough for me. I’m not saying that to detract from his alleged victims at all. But he was a hero of mine.