Dave Chappelle Explains How ‘Key and Peele’ Success ‘Hurts My Feelings’
Chappelle’s Show has been off the air long enough that you might overlook a connection to Key & Peele, though Dave Chappelle certainly popularized the format of comedians having carte blanche over a sketch show. Now, with Chappelle back in the spotlight for his Netflix special, the comedian reveals how Key & Peele “hurts my feelings,” even as he counts himself a fan.
Offering a rare interview to Gayle King for CBS This Morning, Chappelle expressed some resentment toward Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key’s Comedy Central series for pushing some of the same boundaries he’d cleared with Chappelle’s Show. The rivalry even garners a mention in Chappelle’s first Netflix special, though as the comedian told King, he mainly seeks acknowledgement:
When I did Chappelle’s Show, there were certain conventions of the show that the network resisted. I fought the network very hard so that those conventions could come to fruition. So like the first episode, I do that black white supremacist sketch. And it’s like, ‘Well, that’s 10 minutes long. It should be five minutes long.’ Why should it be five minutes long? Like, these types of conventions. I fought very hard. … So when I watch Key & Peele and I see they’re doing a format that I created, and at the end of the show, it says, ‘Created by Key & Peele,’ that hurts my feelings.
It’s true that Comedy Central visibly sought to replicate the success of Chappelle’s Show with other comedians, though Chappelle at least stressed of Key & Peele “I’m a fan of this show.” In any case, both Key and Peele have followed the series with projects equally high-profile to Chappelle, who himself will film an original standup special for Netflix in the coming months.
You can watch the first Chappelle trailer below, and catch both specials from his personal vault on Netflix.