It's been over a half-decade since Dave Chappelle said no thanks to a $50 million offer from Comedy Central and left the top-rated Chappelle's Show during it's third season for Africa. “I felt like some kind of prostitute or something. If I feel so bad, why keep on showing up to this place?” he told Oprah upon returning home from an extended period of seclusion. True to his word, Chappelle has stayed away from TV in the six years since his bizarre exit from Hollywood. Instead, he has of late been working on his stand-up routine in California comedy clubs.
There have been rumors floating around for years that Chappelle was planning a comeback to television. Today saw renewed interest in the subject when an online news source, The Daily, reported, "the beloved comic is planning a new TV show with a paid subscription service like Netflix, Sony’s Crackle, or Hulu, which are now competing in the original programming game." On a certain level, this makes sense. Chappelle cited struggles with Comedy Central brass over creative control on his show and if he were to make his return on a service like Netflix -- as opposed to a traditional broadcast channel -- he would, ostensibly, have free reign to do whatever he wants. A major Hollywood star making the jump from TV or the movies to Netflix isn't completely unheard of: the service has recently recruited David Fincher and Kevin Spacey for an original program called "House of Cards."
Unfortunately, like all of the other Chappelle's Show comeback rumors, this one seems to be bogus. Entertainment Weekly looked into The Daily report and was able to obtain a comment from a Dave Chappelle representative. Carla Sims, the rep, calls the rumors "absolutely untrue." “He’s enjoying his life, he has a new daughter and is just doing what he’s really passionate about — stand-up,” another Chappelle representative told EW. A source for Entertainment Weekly all but puts a nail in the rumor's coffin by indicating that, "if he were to make a return to TV, he would likely aim for a bigger platform than a niche subscription service."
I was getting all ready to make a broad onnection between Conan moving to TBS, Olbermann moving to Current, Stern moving to satellite radio, etc. as part of this broad trend of stars taking their audiences to a new and relatively smaller medium where they have much more control and less interference, etc.
But then it looks like much ado about nothing in this case!
Great reporting on this one Lucas, and please keep us posted if this does develop into something !