Joel McHale revealed the campus of Greendale Community College sometimes broke out into chaos thanks to his contentious relationship with costar Chevy Chase.
McHale, 52, and Chase, 80, appeared together on the NBC comedy for five seasons from 2009 to 2014, with things sometimes escalating to real-life violence.
On a recent episode of the “Inside of You With Michael Rosenbaum” podcast, McHale said he and Chase got into fistfights “multiple times.”
“It was advanced horseplay,” McHale joked. “And then it always turned into sex.”
“TV’s the best dad there is.” Community has a complicated history, but its dedicated fan base has turned the series into a cult favorite. The sitcom, created by Dan Harmon, aired its first five seasons on NBC from 2009 to 2014. The broadcast network later declined to renew the show for a sixth season, leaving […]
But things were far from a laughing matter on set, with McHale admitting things would get “a little contentious” between the two.
“I got in trouble this one time because I injured him,” McHale said. “I dislocated his shoulder.”
Things between the actors were so bad that McHale even dedicated an entire chapter to how to fight Chase in his 2016 book, “Thanks For The Money.”
When Rosenbaum asked McHale if he thought Chase understood he could “be an asshole,” McHale responded, “I would assume so. I would think so.”
Us Weekly reached out to representatives for Chase and Sony Pictures Television for comment but has not heard back.
McHale also responded to recent comments made by Chase on the “WTF with Marc Maron” podcast in September 2023, when Chase said Community was “not funny enough for me.”
The revelation wasn’t news to McHale, who recalled Chase declaring his lines weren’t “funny enough for me to memorize.”
“This was not a prison sentence,” McHale continued. “We were not conscripted into a war. You were being paid a lot of money and getting free food all day long. So, you could just walk away.”
As it turned out, host Rosenbaum — best known for his portrayal of Lex Luthor on Smallville — also had a memorable run-in with Chase.
Rosenbaum claimed that he “had never seen that side that everybody else saw” of Chase until the two were introduced by Rosenbaum’s friend and Chase’s Vacation costar Beverly D’Angelo at a convention. When Rosenbaum told Chase that they had actually met before, he received a very cold shoulder.
Celebrity feuds are so captivating that there’s even an award-winning Ryan Murphy anthology TV series devoted to the topic. While some A-list beefs seem inevitable — Nicki Minaj vs. Cardi B, for example, or Jef Holm vs. Arie Luyendyk Jr. — others seem to come out of nowhere. Freddie Prinze Jr., for instance, spoke ill […]
“I go, ‘Hey, it’s OK. I’m very forgettable,’” Rosenbaum recalled of the encounter. “He goes, ‘Don’t talk in my face.’”
McHale and most of his former Community castmates — including Donald Glover, Gillian Jacobs, Danny Pudi, Alison Brie and Yvette Nicole Brown — are getting set to start filming a highly-anticipated Community film, finally fulfilling the show’s “six seasons and a movie” mantra.
Chase, however, will not be participating.
