Dave Chappelle Talks Stepping Away From Fame

Dave Chappelle recently sat down for an interview with Gayle King for CBS his Morning, where he talked about walking away from The Dave Chappelle show years ago. Here's what he had to say, as reprinted by Page Six:

“Fame, yeah, but not so much that I get on a plane to Africa. Fame is not that kind of scary. But it is – fame is a horrifying concept when it’s aimed at you, you know? At the end of the day, it’s so – you don’t have that much control over it. You just try to conduct yourself as best you can. ‘Chappelle’s Show’s’ like breakin’ up with a girl and you still like her. But in your mind you’re like, ‘That bitch is crazy. I’m not goin’ back.’

I found an altitude I was comfortable with. I found a way that – to do what I liked to do and avoid some of the parts of it that I was uncomfortable with. If you look at me, right, physically – now, I’m, like, 40 pounds heavier than I was when I did ‘Chappelle’s Show.’ And people are like, ‘How did you gain all that weight?’ By resting and eatin’ and payin’ attention to myself. I have actual relationships with my kids. I’ve been all over the country, touring all my life. But I never saw anything. Now I’ve seen everything. I could talk to people or I could – I had time to stop if someone said they liked me. It wasn’t like I brushed past ‘em like, ‘I don’t want to hear it.’ I had time to stop like, ‘You do?’ You know what I mean? It’s like – it was just, like, the way that I engaged the world was different.”