Is Pierce Hawthorne making a comeback? Chevy Chase seems to think so! The Saturday Night Live alum claimed in a recent Reddit AMA that he will be reprising his role on Community in its upcoming sixth season. The surprising news comes two years after Chase dropped the N-word on set of the NBC comedy and made an abrupt exit.
“I will be in a small cameo at the beginning of Community and if they ask me to come back and do one or two appearances, it’s a possibility,” Chase, 71, said when asked on Monday, Dec. 8, if he would return.
“It was very taxing, because we didn’t get to move around a lot, and we would work 15, 16 hours a day sometimes, and right into early Sunday morning,” he added of his frustrations to another fan. “So it was not easy work. I can tell ya.”
“It’s tough to cover eight people around a table without moving the camera, moving the camera, moving the lights, it takes FOREVER, and you have to do it over and over, and make it look fresh,” he continued. “So if people realized that – it can be very taxing and very tough work.”
Although Chase seems to think he’s returning to the Greendale, Colorado school, the actor may not walk through the halls again at all. “At this time, Chevy is not confirmed to appear in Season 6,” a Sony spokesperson tells Us Weekly.
Chase made headlines in September 2012 when he put down the series to Huffington Post UK. He said he loved the cast, but regretted returning to TV altogether.
“It was a big mistake! I saw this pilot script, thought that it was funny, and I went into the room where they were casting and said, ‘I would love to play this guy,'” he said at the time. “Then they mulled it over. Then they hired me and I just sort of hung around because I have three daughters and a wife, and I figured out I might as well make some bread every week, so I can take care of them in the way they want.”
Community was cancelled by the network back in May, but miraculously beat the odds by closing a deal with Yahoo for 13 new episodes the following month.