Dave Chappelle Breaks Silence on Comedy Show Attack

Dave Chappelle’s team has addressed the comedian’s Tuesday night assault on stage during a performance in Los Angeles.

“Dave Chappelle celebrated four nights of comedy and music, setting record-breaking sales for a comedian at the Hollywood Bowl,” the comic’s spokesperson said in a statement obtained by Fox News. “This run ties Chappelle with Monty Python for the most headlined shows by any comedian at the Hollywood Bowl, reaching 70k fans of diverse backgrounds during the first ‘Netflix Is A Joke: The Festival,’ and he refuses to allow last night’s incident to overshadow the magic of this historic moment.”

Chappelle was performing his standup routine at the Hollywood Bowl venue as part of the 14 festival when Lee lunged at him and appeared to try to wrestle him to the ground. Security guards were subsequently able to neutralize the attacker so Chappelle could continue his show. It’s unclear what precipitated or motivated the attack.

“As unfortunate and unsettling as the incident was, Chappelle went on with the show. Jamie Foxx and Chris Rock helped calm the crowd with humor before Chappelle introduced the last and featured musical guests for the evening, hip-hop artists yasiin bey and Talib Kweli, a.k.a. ‘Black Star,’ who performed music from their new album – the first in nearly 24 years – which was released on Luminary. Other special comedic guests last night included Earthquake, Leslie Jones, Jeff Ross, Sebastian, Jon Stewart and Michelle Wolf,” the representative added.

“A man charged and tackled” Chappelle just as the show was ending, Brianna Sacks, a reporter who attended the show, told the Telegraph. The suspect has been identified as Los Angeles resident Isaiah Lee, 23.

Lee charged at Chappelle “armed with a knife and a gun,” an ABC News journalist reported. Early Wednesday, the Los Angeles Police Department clarified that he was carrying a fake gun with a real knife blade inside it, NBC News noted. LAPD confirmed Wednesday that Lee was arrested for felony assault with a deadly weapon. The suspect was wounded sometime during the altercation and was escorted away in an ambulance to the hospital.

One clip from the audience shared on social media showed Chappelle joking, “It was a trans man,” an allusion to the drama that has surrounded the comic since he began performing bits about transgenderism.

Actor Jamie Foxx, who was in the wings of the stage, helped respond so that security could detain the attacker. At the end of the show, Chappelle said: “Shout out to Jamie Foxx by the way. Whenever you’re in trouble, Jamie Foxx will show up in a sheriff’s hat.”

Chappelle carried on unfazed, joking that he thought the attack was part of the show at first, according to video footage.

“We got to protect this man at all times . . . We’re not going to let nothing happen to you,” Foxx said to the audience. “I’ve been doing this 35 years,” he said, adding that he “stomped” the attacker backstage.

“After Chappelle got attacked, he came on stage and they joked that it was Will Smith,” Sacks tweeted.

“The incident that occurred at the Hollywood Bowl on May 3 2022 is an active investigation and we are unable to comment further at this time,” a spokeswoman for the Hollywood Bowl told the Telegraph.

Chappelle was intensely criticized by Hollywood and pop culture media after the release of his Netflix offering, The Closer, which some outlets claimed embedded “pointless transphobia and homophobia” (Daily Beast), “betrayal” (GQ), and “anti-LGBTQ diatribes” (GLAAD). A group of Netflix employees accused Chappelle of being a “transphobe” and inflicting harm on the LGBT community.

In the production, Chappelle pushed the envelope with political references deemed unpalatable by mainstream progressives. He sympathizes with J. K. Rowling and her defense of Trans-exclusionary radical feminism, which contends that transgenderism is backfiring into women’s erasure. He said he was on “Team Terf.”

“I agree, man. Gender is a fact,” he said. His social commentary continued: “I’m not that fond of these newer gays. Too sensitive. Too brittle. Those aren’t the gays I grew up with,” Chappelle says at one point. “They fought for their freedom.”

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