Donald Glover Returning For Community Movie But Another Star Is Not
Donald Glover will be part of the Community movie, but Chevy Chase was not invited back.
Every single time the upcoming Community film faced delays or casting rumors, fans debated among themselves whether we were truly living through the darkest timeline or not. Fortunately, Joel McHale himself recently brought fans some much-anticipated good news…and, in typical fashion, a bit of bad news, too. According to Yahoo! Sport, McHale confirmed that Donald Glover will appear in the upcoming Community movie, but that contentious costar Chevy Chase would not be returning,
Part of why this is such good news is that when Peacock previously announced the movie, neither Donald Glover nor Chevy Chase were mentioned as coming back, nor was fellow costar Yvette Brown. Since then, Brown has confirmed she would be interested in starring in the film, and McHale tagged her as well as Glover in a Twitter post about the film, which many fans took as a sign that they would be in it.
Then again, McHale also accidentally tagged X-Files star Gillian Anderson rather than his costar Gillian Jacobs in that same tweet, leaving fans to wonder if he was doing some bit rather than confirming anything.
The good news is that McHale was very clear recently when confirming the presence of Donald Glover in the movie as well as the absence of Chevy Chase, but he still employed some of that classic Jeff Winger sarcasm. For example, he joked that Glover returning meant we might just see him instead of the other Community actors and that we would just be watching an episode of Atlanta.
And when asked explicitly about Chase, McHale sounded very sarcastic when he said, “There wasn’t any issues at all when we were making the show,” referencing the alleged drama Chase caused on the set.
While those old-fashioned creative differences may lead to Donald Glover getting invited back and Chevy Chase getting the cold shoulder, it also makes narrative sense concerning both of their characters. When we last saw Glover’s Troy Barnes, he was embarking on a Quixotic quest to sail around the world as part of a requirement to inherit millions of dollars.
It’s easy enough for him to come back from the sea, but considering that he inherited everything from Chevy Chase’s deceased character Pierce Hawthorne, it would be difficult for the older Community actor to return outside of flashbacks (or maybe that goofy hologram).
Still, the fact that Donald Glover’s character is now so inextricably linked with Chevy Chase’s character is one reason that we wouldn’t be surprised to see some echoes of Pierce Hawthorne in the film, even if that doesn’t mean seeing any of Chase himself.
For all the drama he allegedly caused behind the scenes, we can’t deny that he often proved to be a very entertaining foil against the schemes of his younger friends in the study group. Still, any sadness we may feel at his departure is offset by the sheer joy that we might get to see Troy and Abed in the morning one last time.
