Michelle Buteau has a few choice words for Dave Chappelle and his past comments about the trans community in her new Netflix comedy special.
Halfway through her comedy show dubbed “Michelle Buteau: A Buteau-ful Mind at Radio City Music Hall,” the comedienne transitions out of a lively discussion about her Black lesbian friend by saying “we can tell jokes and stories and not disparage a whole community.”
“We can do that,” she continues in her special, which dropped Dec. 31. “We can make it funny, we just have to work at it. So if you guys ever run into Dave Chappelle, can you let him know that shit? I don’t think he knows that shit. I don’t think we’ll ever run into Dave, though, because he is the GOAT and that means going off about trans people. Dave, it’s not funny. It’s dangerous.”
“I can’t believe someone would make millions and millions of dollars for making people feel unsafe,” Buteau continued. “That is so wild to me. I wanna make millions and millions of dollars for making people feel safe, seen, secure, heard, and entertained. What are we doing? That is my goal.”
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A year ago this month, Chappelle took more jabs at trans people and even targeted the disabled community in his second Netflix special The Dreamer. He recalled meeting Jim Carrey on the set of the 1999 movie Man on the Moon, in which Carrey portrayed the late comedian Andy Kaufman.
“I was very disappointed because I wanted to meet Jim Carrey and I had to pretend he was Andy Kaufman all afternoon. It was clearly Jim Carrey. I could look at him and clearly see it was Jim Carrey,” Chappelle said, describing how Carrey stayed in character while off-camera. “I say all that to say … that’s how trans people make me feel.”
Later in the special, Chappelle said he was “trying to repair my relationship with the transgender community cause I don’t want them to think that I don’t like them.”
“You know how I’ve been repairing it? I wrote a play. I did. Cause I know that gays love plays,” he said. “It’s a very sad play, but it’s moving. It’s about a Black transgender woman whose pronoun is, sadly, n***a. It’s a tear-jerker. At the end of the play she dies of loneliness cause white liberals don’t know how to speak to her. It’s sad.”
Chappelle’s previous Netflix special The Closer, in which he made disparaging remarks about the transgender and LGBTQ+ communities, prompted an employee walkout at the streamer and a rally with more than 100 protesters in 2021.
The streamer issued a statement ahead of the walkout and after Netflix CEO and chief content manager Ted Sarandos initially defended Chappelle’s remarks, saying he didn’t believe the GLAAD-slammed special crossed “the line on hate.” He later admitted that the internal reaction to the controversy was botched.
The post Michelle Buteau Slams Dave Chappelle’s Trans Jokes In New Netflix Special: “We Can Tell Jokes And Stories & Not Disparage A Whole Community” appeared first on Deadline.
