After Disturbing Allegations Against Star Resurface, Here Are 8 Other Actors Who Were Hated By The Whole Cast

Shia LaBeouf was praised for his acting, but he was harshly criticized by his cast members on the set of the Second World War drama Fury.

The controversial actor’s behavior was allegedly so off-putting that several actors, including Brad Pitt who was reportedly outraged that she refused to shower.

“Shia was warned about his behaviour by several people on set, including Brad Pitt and director David Ayer,” a source told the Daily Mail in 2014.

Despite the warnings, LaBeouf reportedly didn’t pay heed and continued his behavior, which landed him in a small bed-and-breakfast hotel away from the rest of the Fury cast.

The source claimed that LaBeouf took his method-acting approach a bit too far.

“Shia drove everyone mad on set trying to prove that he was the most dedicated star,” the source told the outlet.

“He pulled out his own tooth during the first few weeks of filming and then refused to shower for weeks on end so he could better understand how his character would have felt living in the trenches,” they added.

Co-star Scott Eastwood said he once had a scuffle with LaBeouf on the Fury set.

He claimed LaBeouf was having an “episode” and didn’t want Eastwood to be “spitting tobacco on the tank,” which was part of the script.

“I said, ‘Hey, f*** you.’ Said, ‘Stop pulling your sh**. I’m gonna whoop your a**,’” Eastwood said on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast in 2026.

Brad Pitt wound up being the one who broke up their “tense moment.”

He said the Transformers star was, in general, “tough” to work with and was “clearly tormented.”

Logan Lerman, who also starred in the movie, spoke about LaBeouf’s eccentricities, including the decision to pull a tooth out.

“He didn't do it himself,” Lerman told GQ in 2014. "He did go to a dentist and asked them to pull his tooth out, but, yeah, what an odd request..."

But what was probably even stranger was LaBeouf being dissatisfied with the makeup on his face, particularly the cuts his character sustained on the battlefield.

“Shia was like, ‘No, it doesn't look real,’” Lerman recalled one incident while filming. 

“Then he walks out into the hallway, and says, ‘Hey man, wanna see something fun? Check this out…’ And he takes out a knife and cuts his face,” he continued. “And for the whole movie he kept opening these cuts on his face. That's all real.”

Lerman, however, claimed that claims about the cast having a problem with him not washing himself the entire time was “false.”

Eastwood still maintained that he was a “complete pain in the a**.”

“I never think your process as an actor should ever hinder how people are treated on set,” Eastwood told Insider in 2022. “It should always enhance the production, not take away and put people in a situation where it’s a sh**ty work environment, or you’re rude, or people have to be in an uncomfortable situation.”

LaBeouf was also at the center of rumors about him having a physical brawl with his Lawless co-star Tom Hardy.

Australian filmmaker and the film’s director, John Hillcoat, set the record straight in a Reddit “ask me anything” more than a decade later.


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“Is it true that Shia LaBeouf knocked out Tom Hardy on the Lawless set? If so, what is the story and how do you feel about it?” a Reddit user asked.

“No, that's not true,” Hillcoat replied. “But there was definitely a fight between them.”

He said the fight did escalate to a point where the two stars had to be “restrained.”

“But I was very pleased to hear it didn't go that way because I would hate to see the outcome,” he added.

LaBeouf also claimed that rumors about him throwing a punch at Hardy was a “bunch of bullsh**.”

“We used to wrestle all the time and he's a big f***ing person, especially then. He was getting ready [to play] Bane,” he said on Hot Ones in 2019.

He said there was one such playful-wrestling incident where he wound up on Hardy’s shoulders without any clothes on.

Recalling the incident, he said his girlfriend was at his house at the time and they were on the balcony when he saw Hardy and his trainer returning from the gym.

“We used to f*** with each other all the time but it just so happened that, this one week, my girlfriend was in town and he runs into the room,” he said, admitting his girlfriend at the time was “terrified.” 

“She covered up and she ran into the kitchen and he picked me up and I didn’t have nothing on so now I'm nak*d on his shoulder,” he continued. “We're in the hallway, we're wrestling around.”

When the finale of The O.C. season three aired May 18, 2006, fans were shocked to see the beloved character Marissa Cooper tragically lose her life in a car crash.

Years later, actress Mischa Barton seemed to have made peace with her abrupt exit as she said she didn’t feel like Marissa had a clear path.

She also felt like she could no longer “keep going” due to the environment on set.

“I just felt very unprotected, I guess is the best way to put it,” the actress told ET in 2021.

Barton was only 17 when she landed the role and was 20 when she left it behind. 

In addition to dealing with the early fame, the Sixth Sense actress claimed she also had to deal with bullying on set. 

“There were people on that set that were very mean to me. It wasn't, like, the most ideal environment for a young, sensitive girl who's also been thrust into stardom to have to put up with,” she told the outlet.


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Looking back at her exit more than a decade later, Barton found it “sad” that there wasn’t a “better way” for her to depart. But overall, she felt it was the best thing for her and her health because she was “not really feeling protected” by her cast and crew.

For others on set, all they allegedly saw was a teenager trying to keep up with the strenuous hours of a television show.

Executive producer Bob DeLaurentis admitted if he could re-do things, he would have cast someone older to play Marissa Cooper. 

He said Barton didn’t “mix and mingle” much with the rest of the cast. “She’d be sitting there with her book,” he told Vanity Fair.

One source claimed she was a “nightmare” to have on the set, claiming the bullying accusations were going too far.

They said she would constantly “show up late” for filming and her mom, also her manager, was “annoying.

“So now she wants to go say that she was bullied,” the source told Page Six in 2021 in response to Barton’s bullying allegations. “It wasn’t that she was bullied. People didn’t appreciate waiting for hours for her to show up.”

Barton then returned the clap-back with a statement to the outlet, saying there was “a lot going on” while filming the hit teen soap.

“Whether I was late or not doesn’t excuse certain behavior from individuals in powerful positions,” she said. “Everyone experiences things differently and where I acknowledge some of my past behavior may not have been helpful in certain instances, I will tell my truth when I feel ready.”

Barton’s co-stars Rachel Bilson and Melinda Clarke said they found her bullying claims “perplexing.”

“Someone who is 16, 17, 18 — that amount of hours of work, pressure, at such a young age — at best, you’re exhausted and at worst, it’s overwhelming and chaotic so, it kinda breaks my heart a little to know [that],” Clarke, who portrayed Marissa Cooper’s mom, said on an episode of her podcast Welcome to the OC, B*tches!

Clarke said it was clear there was a lot of pressure on Barton at the time.

However, “some of the comments were very perplexing to me. So, I don’t know what the truth is about that. I do know that, yes, this was an enormous amount of pressure for her. And for everybody,” she added.

From racism to bullying, from mocking to taunting, Lea Michele has been accused of it all by her co-stars on Glee.

Co-star Heather Morris, who played cheerleader Brittany S. Pierce, on the show, claimed the cast was too “scared” to report her “bullying” on the set of the popular Fox musical dramedy.

“We absolutely could have stepped up and gone to the Fox execs and said how we felt about the situation, and nobody really did,” she said during a 2021 appearance on the Everything Iconic podcast.

“I think many people were very scared,” she said. “I know, genuinely, I didn’t feel like it was my place. And I don’t know why, because I was a cast member just like everybody else, and we all deserve to feel comfortable on a set.”

She said the actress with powerhouse vocals was “unpleasant to work with,” but it was “very hugh-hush” during production.

Michele, who played the lead character Rachel Berry on the show, was first hit with allegations when she expressed outrage over the k*lling of George Floyd by a cop and used the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag.

Her co-star Samantha Marie Ware, who played Jane Hayward, slammed the actress and said: “LMAO REMEMBER WHEN YOU MADE MY FIRST TELEVISON [SIC] GIG A LIVING HELL?!?! CAUSE ILL NEVER FORGET.”

“I BELIEVE YOU TOLD EVERYONE THAT IF TOU HAD THE OPPORTUNITY YOU WOULD ‘SH** IN MY WIG!” she continued, adding that this was among other “traumatic micro-aggressions” that made her question her Hollywood career.

Ware’s explosive tweet came out of nowhere, but it triggered a wave of stories about Michele from fellow co-stars.

“Was she unpleasant to work with? Very much so; for Lea to treat others with the disrespect that she did for as long as she did, I believe she SHOULD be called out,” Morris wrote on X.

She also said it was on them for allowing “it to go on for so long.”

“But, at the current moment its implied that she is a racist and although I cannot comment on her beliefs, I think we’re assuming, and you know what happens when we all assume…” she added.

Dabier Snell, who appeared on one episode of Glee in 2014, also shared an all-caps tweet at the time.

“GIRL YOU WOULDN’T LET ME SIT AT THE TABLE WITH THE OTHER CAST MEMBERS CAUSE ‘I DIDN’T BELONG THERE.’ F*** YOU LEA,” Snell wrote.

Amber Riley, who played Mercedes Jones on Glee, claimed she has had other Black stars share similar stories from working with Michele.

“I’m not going to say that Lea Michele is racist. That’s not what I’m saying,” she said on Real Quick with Danielle Young in 2020.


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“That was the assumption because of what’s going on right now in the world and it happened toward a Black person,” the actress continued. “I’m not going to say that she’s racist.”

Riley said people need to “chill” after having “dragged” Michele for a couple of days. 

But at the same time, “in my inbox there are a lot of Black actors and actresses telling me their stories and letting me know they have dealt with the same things on set, being terrorized by the white girls that are the leads of the show,” she said.

Meanwhile, Yvette Nicole Brown, who starred in The Mayor with Michele, said she felt “every one of those capital letters” shared by Ware on X.

“Every person on a set matters,” Brown said in her own tweet. “ ... It is the responsibility of every series regular to make every person who visits their home feel welcome. This dismissive attitude is what’s wrong in Hollywood and the world.”

After coming under massive fire online, Michele issued a lengthy apology on Instagram.

“While I don’t remember ever making this specific statement and I have never judged others by their background or color of their skin, that’s not really the point,” Michele wrote. “What matters is that I clearly acted in ways which hurt other people.” 

Gerard Canonico, who worked as an understudy on Broadway play Spring Awakening, commented on her apology and said he was going to “try again” because his first comment seemed to have been deleted.

“You were nothing but a nightmare to me and fellow understudy cast members,” he went on to say. “You made us feel like we didn’t belong there.”

Canonico claimed he tried to “be nice” to her for years but “to no avail.”

“Maybe actually apologize instead of placing the blame on how others ‘perceive’ you,” he added. “You’ll probably just delete this though.”

“No backstabbing. Only back-scratching.”

This was one of the many signs that Marc Cherry, creator of Desperate Housewives, was forced to put up on set to prevent the show’s leading ladies from squabbling with each other.

The show, which ran from 2004 and 2012 was about four best friends—Gabrielle Solis (played by Eva Longoria), Bree Van De Kamp (played by Marcia Cross), Lynette Scavo (played by Felicity Huffman), and Susan Meyer (played by Teri Hatcher)—living their lives on Wisteria Lane, hiding many secrets behind their white picket fences.

The four characters were shown as a tight-knight, inseparable group onscreen and navigate through their neighborhood scandals together. But off-screen, Hatcher reportedly wound up being the odd one out. 

Hatcher “physically separates herself from the others during breaks in filming. Something went down… that created a deep rift,” TV Guide magazine's William Keck previously told CelebBuzz. 

Tensions got so high on set that Cherry once had to break up Nicollette Sheridan (who played Edie Britt) and Hatcher after Sheridan called the latter “the meanest woman in the world” to her face.

As things escalated, Cherry claimed he was forced to hire television psychologist Dr Phil McGraw to hold regular therapy sessions for the cast.


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When the show was at the peak of its popularity, the leading ladies landed on the cover of Vanity Fair in 2005. But the co-stars were allegedly intolerable divas during the photoshoot and interviews.

“You Won't Believe What It Took Just To Get This Photo!” was the magazine headline.

The actresses were allegedly furious over Hatcher squirming her way in to get first pick of the swimsuits they would be posing in.

“Hatcher was the first to arrive and she cheerfully made her way to the wardrobe trailer (which, according to standard Hollywood protocol operates on a first-come, first-served basis),” wrote a Vanity Fair reporter.

Cross allegedly stormed when she saw Hatcher’s red swimsuit and allegedly yelled at an ABC employee, saying: “Get your f***ing a– over here now, and do your f***ing job!”

“When Cross saw that Hatcher was beside her in an eye popping cherry-red bathing suit, she exploded, grabbed her bathrobe and walked off the set,” wrote a Vanity Fair reporter.

Longoria was also reportedly upset about the entire situation.

It is believed an “assistant” from the show tried to inform the Vanity Fair team about not letting Hatcher be the first to put her hand in their wardrobe.

“You've got to stop her. She can't go in there first! This is a problem. I'm getting text messages from Eva. Everything is not fine,” the assistant allegedly said. 

The show’s queens also allegedly fought over who got to be in the center of the photos.

Ultimately, the co-stars vowed to never pose together again as a group after the entire Vanity Fair fiasco.

Another flashpoint in Hatcher’s relationship with her co-stars took place when she wasn’t included in a goodbye gift given from the cast to the crew.

When the show concluded after eight seasons, stars Longoria, Cross, Huffman, and co-star Vanessa Williams presented the crew members with a gift that had all their names on it. But Hatcher’s name was infamously left out of the card.

“The girls don’t get along with Teri so they organized this and left her out,' a production source told Celebuzz at the time.

Hatcher once said she would “never disclose the true and complicated journey” for the cast. “But I wish everyone on the show well,” she added.

In 2018, Star magazine published a cover story about Hatcher, claiming she was broke, homeless, and living in a van.

The veteran actress, whose picture in a Superman cape was reportedly the most downloaded image on the internet in the mid-90s, said the claims were “categorically false.”

“An article that says exactly that — it’s totally absurd — that I am broke and homeless and living out of my van,” she said during a chat with KTLA’s Sam Rubin.

“I am not broke. I have done very well investing my money. I am not homeless and I am not living out of my van,” she added.

She said that about two weeks before the story came out, the magazine had reached out to her publicist, saying they had paparazzi photos of her on a beach.

“They said they were going to run this story about me being broke, and I think they even used the word s**cidal and homeless and whatever,” she recalled.

“My lawyer and my publicist said, ‘Categorically not true, you can’t print that, she’s doing a YouTube show, that’s her van, she has many homes in many states all over the country. There’s noting about this that’s true,’” she went on to say.

Hatcher claimed the magazine printed the story anyway and called it “so purposely hurtful.”

If you or someone you know is struggling with self-h**m or s**c*de ideation, help is available: International Hotlines

The number of cast feuds and explosive exits from the Grey’s Anatomy set are just as dramatic as the show’s chaotic love triangles.

One of the most scandalous controversies was a physical brawl between Isaiah Washington (who played Dr. Preston Burke) and Patrick Dempsey (who played Derek Shepherd a.k.a. McDreamy) about two years into the show.

The show’s creator Shonda Rhimes was worried the scandal would “k*ll the show.” But lucky for her, the show has been running for over two decades and has bagged the title of being the longest-running primetime medical drama.

“It’s funny, every Grey’s actor I talk to who was there during that time is still traumatized by that incident,” Rhimes told the Hollywood Reporter in 2025. “People still talk about it.”

Washington was fired in 2007 for using a homophobic slur on set during a tussle with Dempsey.

It was alleged that one of the two actors had arrived on set late in October, 2006, to “pay [the other] back” for being late themself on a previous occasion, one of the show’s writer Mark Wilding recalled in Lynette Rice's new book, How to Save a Life: The Inside Story of Grey's Anatomy.

“It sort of exploded. They got into an arguing match, and then before you know it they were physically fighting,” Wilding said.

Harry Werksman, another writer from the show, said: “Isaiah, for whatever reason that day, just took that the wrong way and he went after Patrick.” 

During the altercation, Washington used a homophobic slur aimed at their co-star T.R. Knight’s orientation.

“I guess he felt disrespected that he and the crew had been waiting,” he said. “He went after Patrick, pushed him up against the wall, and said, ‘You can't talk to me the way you talk to that little f****t T.R.’”

Knight also spoke about it publicly on the Ellen DeGeneres in 2007, saying: “He referred to me as a f****t. Everyone heard it.”

Washington, who was fired from the series, later spoke about the incident on Larry King Live in 2007.

“I am not homophobic — in no way, shape or form,” he insisted.

He had later repeated the same slur backstage at the Golden Globes, saying he had never used the gay slur.

“No, I did not call T.R. a f****t,” he said. “Never happened, never happened.”

Following the backlash, Washington apologized for his comments on the Golden Globes night, saying he could “neither defend nor explain” his behavior.

“I can also no longer deny to myself that there are issues I obviously need to examine within my own soul, and I’ve asked for help,” he said.

He apologized to Knight, his colleagues, fans, and “especially the lesbian and gay community,” saying he “marred what should have been a perfect night.”



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Another much-talked about exit from the Grey’s Anatomy was the departure of Katherine Heigl, who played Dr. Izzie Stevens for six-seasons before ultimately leaving in 2010.

After winning an Emmy for the role in 2007, she withdrew her name from being considered in 2008 because she didn’t think the “material” given to her in season 4 would “warrant” a nomination.

Rhimes said at the time that she was “surprised” but not “insulted” by Heigl’s comments. But the incident sparked rumors of tension between them.

Years later, Heigl spoke about the feud to The Washington Post, “At the time, I was just quickly told to shut the f*** up.”

“The more I said I was sorry, the more they wanted it,” she continued. “The more terrified and scared I was of doing something wrong, the more I came across like I had really done something horribly wrong.”

Fans dealt with another shock when Knight also left the show after his character George O'Malley was getting a very noticeably low amount of screentime in season 5.

He believed his character had “expired” by that point and also believed there was a gradual “breakdown of communication” between him and Rhimes.

“There just comes a time when it's so clear that moving on is the best decision,” Knight told Entertainment Weekly in 2022.

Other complications on the Grey’s Anatomy set included “H.R. problems” that reportedly led to Patrick Dempsey being written out of the show.

“He sort of was terrorizing the set. Some cast members had all sorts of PTSD with him. He had this hold on the set where he knew he could stop production and scare people,” executive producer James D. Parriott said in one chapter of How to Save a Life: The Inside Story of Grey's Anatomy.

Parriott said people from the network and studio got involved and had “session” with the actor, who seemed to be “done” with the show by that point.

“He didn’t like the inconvenience of coming in every day and working,” he said. “He and Shonda were at each other’s throats.”

Author Rice wrote in the book that there was “talk” about Dempsey having “tension” and throwing “diva-like fits” with the show’s leading lady Ellen Pompeo (who plays Meredith Grey), who is also the love interest of Dempsey’s character.

Pompeo allegedly grew frustrated with him over not “working as much” and complaining on the set. 

“She was very big on having things be fair. She just didn’t like that Patrick would complain that ‘I’m here too late’ or ‘I’ve been here too long’ when she had twice as many scenes in the episode as he did,” Producer and writer Jeannine Renshaw recalled in the book.

“When I brought it up to Patrick, I would say, ‘Look around you. These people have been here since six thirty a.m.’ He would go, ‘Oh, yeah.’ He would get it. It’s just that actors tend to see things from their own perspective.”

After Dempsey’s character lost his life in season 11, Pompeo revealed in a 2018 interview that she hadn’t spoken to him since his 2015 departure from Grey’s Anatomy.

She said on the Red Table Talk that she had “no hard feelings” toward him and called him a “wonderful actor.”

“We made the best TV you can make together," she said.

Pompeo also explained that people take time to “find themselves” after exiting a long-running show because it consumes so much space in their lives. 

“You need that time to figure out who you are without the show, so, we have not spoken, but I will always have a place in my heart for Patrick,” she said.

William Shatner’s Star Trek is certainly enormous, but tales about his friction with castmates are just big.

Star Trek was the kind of show that made waves on television, becoming wildly popular and paving way for an entire space empire.

Shatner’s iconic role of Captain Kirk was complemented by the character Spock, the half-alien, half-human hybrid played by Leonard Nimoy.

Filming nearly 80 episodes over three years, Shatner and Nimoy built a much-talked about relationship over the years. The former even called the latter the only real friend he had in a book he wrote, titled: Leonard: My Fifty-Year Friendship With a Remarkable Man.

But from the outside, their relationship seemed complicated, with claims online about Shatner being jealous of his co-star and even allegedly stealing some of Spock’s lines, hoping to make his character sound intelligent onscreen.

It is also believed Nimoy wasn’t speaking to Shatner in the last few years prior to his 2015 passing. Nimoy reportedly shut him out after Shatner filmed him for a documentary without his permission.

“I thought he was kidding;” Shatner wrote in his book, “Leonard… It was such a small thing.”


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While filming for Star Trek, the co-stars seemed to have a love-hate relationship and a friendly rivalry on set.

Co-star George Takei, who portrayed Hikaru Sulu, commented on their dynamics and admitted he found Shatner difficult to work with.

“There is this fiction that Bill and Leonard [Nimoy] were good friends, but we know better—Leonard privately expressed his irritation with Bill,” Takei told The Times in 2023.

Actor James Doohan, who played played Lieutenant Commander Montgomery "Scotty" Scott in the series, expressed similar frustrations as Takei about Shatner’s off-putting behavior on set.

“I like Captain Kirk, but I sure don't like Bill. He's so insecure that all he can think about is himself,” Doohan once said.

Bill Murray has built a reputation as one of Hollywood’s most beloved comedians. But his co-stars don’t seem as enthusiastic when they share on-set experiences they have had with him.

Murray has been involved in a string of reported behind-the-scenes conflicts over the years, including allegedly using “inexcusable and unacceptable” language while speaking to Lucy Liu on the Charlie’s Angels.

Liu has opened up about Murray hurling insults at her while they were working on a scene for the 2000 film.

The Elementary star said she wasn’t going to sit there and “be attacked.”

“I stood up for myself, and I don’t regret it,” she said on the Asian Enough podcast in 2021. “Because no matter how low on the totem pole you may be or wherever you came from, there’s no need to condescend or to put other people down. And I would not stand down, and nor should I have.”

Murray had acknowledged the spat in a 2009 interview with the Times of London.

“Look, I will dismiss you completely if you are unprofessional and working with me …When our relationship is professional, and you’re not getting that done, forget it.” he said. 

Murray also had an altercation once with former Saturday Night Live star Chevy Chase. They began serving verbal jabs at each other on the SNL set that quickly escalated to a physical brawl.

It is believed Murray told Chase to go and be physically intimate with his then-wife, Jacqueline Carlin. Chase clapped back saying his face looked “like something Neil Armstrong landed on,” according to the book Live from New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live.

The altercation quickly turned physical, with SNL cast member Laraine Newman saying on a 2021 appearance on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen that it was “very sad and painful and awful.”

Another clash Murray had during filming was on the set of 1988’s Scrooged with director Richard Donner.

He is “superbly creative but occasionally difficult,” Donner once described the actor before supplying an additional comment: “As difficult as any actor.”

Fellow actor and Oscar winner Richard Dreyfuss found Murray to be a “drunken bully” on set.

“Bill just got drunk at dinner,” he told Yahoo! 2019 about their time on the set of the 1991 movie What About Bob? 

“He was an Irish drunken bully, is what he was,” he added.

During one incident, Murray went as far as throwing an ashtray after being asked to read a small adjustment to the script.

“He put his face next to me, nose-to-nose, and he screamed at the top of his lungs, ‘Everyone hates you! You are tolerated!’” Dreyfuss recalled.

The actor said there was no time to react, saying, “he took a modern glass-blown ashtray. He threw it at my face from [only a couple feet away]. 

Luckily, the three-quarters of a pound-weighing ashtray missed him.

“He [then] tried to hit me,” he added. “I got up and left.”

“A f***ing d**chebag” is how comedian Pete Davidson described Chevy Chase, who was part of the inaugural group of Saturday Night Live cast members back in 1975.

“F*** Chevy Chase. He’s just a genuinely bad, racist person and I don’t like him. He’s a putz,” Davidson said in 2018 after Chase criticized the new SNL cast.

Chase was seen as the first major breakout star of SNL and won two Primetime Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe for his work on the long-running show.

But when he returned to SNL for a 1997 appearance, fellow comedian Will Ferrell claimed he was “the worst host” ever.

“I don’t know if he was on something or what, if he took too many back pills that day or something, but he was just kind of going around the room and systematically riffing,” Ferrell said in the 2002 book Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live.

“When he got to one of our female writers, he made some reference like, ‘Maybe you can give me a handj*b later,’” he added, recalling how SNL creator Lorne Michaels was "embarrassed and red” over his behavior.

Many Chase-haters believe the true extent of his problematic behavior came out during the production of the NBC sitcom Community.

Co-stars claimed he was racist, misogynistic, and difficult to work with.


Community

Donald Glover, who shared the screen with Chase in Community, claimed he would make repeated racially-charged statements on set, one of which allegedly was: “People think you’re funnier because you’re Black.”

“I just saw Chevy as fighting time—a true artist has to be O.K. with his reign being over,” Glover told the New Yorker in 2018. “I can’t help him if he’s thrashing in the water. But I know there’s a human in there somewhere—he’s almost too human.”

The show’s creator Dan Harmon claimed he once apologized to Glover for his interactions with Glover.

“Chevy was the first to realize how immensely gifted Donald was, and the way he expressed his jealousy was to try to throw Donald off,” Harmon said in 2018.

The show, Community, was all about a dysfunctional study group trying to get through college. And it turned out that their behind-the-scenes equation was fraught with just as many tense moments and clashes on set.

When Chase played the character of Pierce Hawthorne in the NBC sitcom Community, the longtime actor was introduced to a new generation of viewers.

In March 2012, Chase had grown increasingly uncomfortable with his character arc and had walked off the set during the season 3 finale.

He, however, did return for the season 3 wrap party alongside his wife, Jayni Chase, and their daughter Caley, but the atmosphere was awkward to say the least.

An outraged Harmon, creator of the show, allegedly asked some of the party guests to chant “F*** you, Chevy!” as they walked in.

“My dad was super excited to bring me and my mom to the wrap party,” Chevy’s daughter said in the I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not documentary by CNN, released in January, 2026.

“We walk in, Dan, he had had some drinks. He had gotten the whole cast and crew to yell, ‘F*** you, Chevy!’ ‘F*** you, Chevy!’ I’m there, he’s showing his daughter, like, ‘This is the show I did,’ and we walk in to ‘F*** you, Chevy!’ That’s rough and mean,” she recalled.

Later, Chase left Harmon an angry voicemail, calling him a “godd***, a**hole, alcoholic, fat s***.”

Chase slammed the show for not being “funny” enough and said, “If you want me on this show again, I have news for you: I don’t want it. It’s just a mediocre f***ing sitcom.”

Instead of taking the high road, Harmon decided to air their dirty laundry by playing the voicemail at a public event, ultimately adding fuel to the controversy.

Harmon was later fired in 2012, but it was claimed his exit had nothing to do with Chase.

His departure, however, did not do much to quell the tension on set, as the new showrunners, David Guarascio and Moses Port, continued having problems with Chase.

The now 82-year-old actor had protested to his character Pierce using a hand puppet in blackface for a season 4 episode Advanced Documentary Filmmaking.

Reports later claimed he used a racial slur on set in a conversation with co-star Yvette Nicole Brown.

Following massive outrage, Chase claimed he was unhappy about his character’s racist development on the show and expressed concern over the writers possibly going to make his character say the N-word on the show.

He claimed he didn’t actually direct the racial slur at anyone.

Community director Jay Chandrasekhar, who hadn’t directly heard the conversation between Chase and Brown, spoke about the incident in the 2026 CNN documentary.

“[Brown] got up and stormed out of there,” he recalled. “Chevy storms off, so the producer is like, ‘We need Yvette in the scene, right?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, she’s in the next scene.’ And he goes, ‘Well, she won’t come out unless Chevy apologizes to her.'”

When the incident reached the press, Chase reportedly had a “full meltdown” on set and claimed his career was ruined, Chandrasekhar added.

Chase never came back to the set after the “meltdown” and was written off the show, with his character Pierce unexpectedly passing. He did return to season 5 for a brief cameo.

Harmon had also returned as Community’s showrunner in season 5 following Chase’s exit.

In a 2026 interview with the New York Times, Chase addressed the controversy and insisted that whatever happened on the Community set was a “great misunderstanding.”

“I thought that there was at least one person — and another who, for some ungodly reason, didn’t get me, didn’t know who I was, or didn’t realize for one second I’m not racist,” he told the outlet.

“They were too young to be aware of my work. Instead, there was some sort of visceral reaction from them,” he said about the show’s team.