Comedians have been speaking out after Dave Chappelle was attacked onstage at the Hollywood Bowl on Tuesday night (3 May).
Chappelle was performing at the Netflix is a Joke festival in Los Angeles when a man, since identified as 23-year-old Isaiah Lee, ran on stage and charged at him, carrying a replica handgun fitted with an ejecting knife blade.
While attendees were supposed to be prohibited from filming the live shows, footage surfaced online showing both the attack and the aftermath.
Immediately after the altercation, the attacker was detained by security and removed from the scene. He has been charged with assault with a deadly weapon.
Chappelle was not injured during the incident and is fully co-operating with the police investigation.
Canadian comic Howie Mandel, speaking with presenter Billy Bush on the US news show Extra, said: “Watching what happened to Dave last night confirmed my fear. I was watching it kind of live on Twitter and I turned to my wife and I said, ‘I don’t want to. I don’t want to go on stage. I’m just really afraid.’”
He added that he is going to “do less” live shows, saying: “The love of what we do is fading… joking now has no safety net.”
On Twitter, comedian Tim Young posted: “We can all thank Will Smith for setting the example that led to Dave Chappelle getting assaulted on stage last night.”
At the Oscars ceremony in March, Smith walked on stage and slapped Chris Rock, who had made a joke about his wife Jada Pinkett Smith’s shaved head.
After Chappelle was attacked, Rock joked: “Was that Will Smith?”
Comedian Tony Baker posted: “Some dude tackled Dave Chappelle on stage and that dude got stomped out forthwith.
“They took his arm off and put it back on backwards. That’s what he get. This attacking people on stage aint gon fly.”
“Gettin’ dangerous out here,” comedian George Wallace tweeted along with a photo of his face edited onto an image of the pope riding in his Popemobile. “Got no time for the rope-a-dope, Wallace is gonna ride like the Pope. I’m rollin’ The Jokemobile on stage from now on and whatnot.”
Comic David Angelo joked: “In light of the Dave Chappelle attack, I’m grateful to New York comedy clubs protecting me by not booking me at all in the past 10 months. Safety is paramount. My thoughts are with the ~17 comics who perform on every show every night.”
Curtis Shaw Flagg, president of The Laugh Factory Chicago, told The Hollywood Reporter: “First reaction was: ‘Here we go again,’ second reaction was, ‘Nobody’s safe.’
“We are leaving comedians completely exposed. We’re allowing them to exercise their creative speech on stage, but we aren’t taking the requisite steps to make sure that they’re protected.”
Read Chappelle’s statement on the incident here.
