Dave Chappelle said during a recent episode of the “IMO” podcast that the media gets his comedy “wrong” when covering his transgender jokes. The stand-up legend urged audiences to account for a “margin of error” when watching his sets.
“People would think it’s me vs. the gay community. I never looked at it like that,” Chappelle said. “I always thought it was corporate interest and culture negotiating itself. So, you know, most of those people who were critical of what I was doing didn’t seem like they were of it. It’s like they had their faces pressed against the glass, commenting on what we were doing in there, but they weren’t in there doing it.”
“Every opinion you can think of is represented in a comedy club,” he added. ”Every type of person you can imagine does stand-up comedy—transgender stand-up comics, Black, white, Asian, every kind of perspective. And we all champion whatever opinion we champion. We would never think to silence one another.”
Chappelle explained that, between sets, comedians constantly discuss their different points of view and how comedy can be filtered through different cultural lenses. He added that the media has a hard time doing the same and often takes his jokes out of context.
“Nothing makes a comedian madder than reading his joke wrong in the paper,” Chappelle said. “You know, and reading a joke is nothing like hearing one or being one, and the intention of a comedy show is a very unique intention. We are playing with whatever the culture is made of, and we break it down and we get it right or we get it wrong. But in all art, if it’s going to be good or even hopefully great, you gotta have a margin of error.”
Chappelle is set to perform at the Hollywood Palladium on May 7-9 during Netflix Is a Joke Fest.
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