Making light of a scary situation. After an audience member recently attacked Dave Chappelle on stage, the comedian claimed that a few of his celebrity friends broke the man’s arm — but the quip was just part of his routine.
“I felt good my friends broke his arm. I felt good,” the Chappelle’s Show alum, 48, said at the afterparty for the “Netflix Is A Joke” event on Tuesday, May 3, per an audio recording obtained by TMZ. He also quipped — in addition to his claims that Jamie Foxx and Busta Rhymes assisted with beating up the attacker — “How bad does a [N-word] have to be that Jon Stewart would stomp him?”
According to the actor’s rep, Carla Sims, Chappelle was just “joking” about his friends hurting the perpetrator, who has since been identified as Isiah Lee. Sims confirmed that Stewart, 59, Foxx, 54, and Rhymes, 49, did not attack Lee.
At the time of the Ohio native’s show earlier this week, Lee stormed the stage with a fake gun and a real knife, tackling Chappelle to the ground. He was quickly arrested, Us Weekly confirmed, and held on $30,000 bail. He is now facing four misdemeanor charges, per multiple outlets. (Though he wasn’t actually injured by the trio, Lee was treated at a hospital for “superficial injuries,” according to NBC Los Angeles.)
Chappelle “refuses to allow [the] incident to overshadow the magic of this historic moment,” a rep for the standup star told Us on Thursday, May 5. The A Star Is Born actor broke two comedy records at the Netflix festival on Tuesday, his spokesperson noted.
“As unfortunate and unsettling as the incident was, Chappelle went on with the show,” the rep continued, acknowledging that “Jamie Foxx and Chris Rock helped calm the crowd with humor before Chappelle introduced the last and featured musical guests for the evening.”
For his part, Rock, 57, even made a joke about his own recent run-in on stage. The Saturday Night Live alum made light of the 2022 Oscars incident in which he was slapped across the face by Will Smith for making a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair loss. (She has alopecia.)
“Was that Will Smith?” Rock quipped, according to a TikTok clip from the event.
“I thought that was part of the show,” Foxx said, calling the Comedy Central alum an “absolute genius” who “we’ve got to make sure we protect … at all times.”
In regard to the aftermath of the attack, Chappelle “is fully cooperating with the active police investigation,” the actor’s rep told Us on Thursday.
