The May 16 issue of Newsweek quotes friends of Dave Chappelle, 31, who say the real reason for the delay in starting season three of his Comedy Central show is that he’s worn down from too much pressure, too much partying and issues with the network.
Dave’s publicist Matt Labov released a statement saying, “He’s not in rehab. He does not have a cocaine addiction.”
Newsweek writer Devin Gordon contacted several of the comedian’s close friends, who said their boy’s unprecedented $50 million deal to produce two more seasons of “Chappelle’s Show” transformed him from a funny brother with a decade of false starts to the hottest comedian in America, and he wasn’t prepared.
“I saw him start trippin’ when the buzz started to get real loud,” one celebrity friend tells Newsweek. “I think he was in shock after the first season, and then [during] the second, it hit him that he was the man. That freaked him.”
Gordon also reports that Chappelle is looking to push the racial humor even farther in the third season – and network executives are reportedly afraid he’s crossed the line.
Gordon was on the show’s set in November 2004. Chappelle was in blackface, with white painted lips, dressed for a sketch in which Chappelle plays a cackling, devil-on-the-shoulder creation who serves as the self-hating conscience of famous black men, such as Tiger Woods. With a minstrel accent, he kept busting up the crew with his profane ad-libs over footage of Woods attempting a putt.