Terry Sweeney broke ground as Saturday Night Live\u2018s first out gay castmember during that program\u2019s 1985-86 season.<\/p>\n
Now Sweeney, 75, is breaking his silence on a decades-long feud with Chevy Chase after Chase proposed Sweeney appear in an SNL sketch mocking the AIDS epidemic.<\/p>\n
More from The Hollywood Reporter<\/p>\n
The ignominious chapter is one of several<\/a> revisited in I\u2019m Chevy Chase and You\u2019re Not, a new documentary about the comedian set to premiere Jan. 1.<\/p>\n In the film, director Marina Zenovich reminds Chase of the joke that offended Sweeney, best remembered for his lacerating impression of then-first lady Nancy Reagan.<\/p>\n \u201cYou said something to Sweeney like, \u2018Oh, you\u2019re the gay guy. Why don\u2019t we ask if you have AIDS. And every week, we weigh you,\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Of the joke, SNL creator Lorne Michaels then explains, \u201cI think Chevy was just being Chevy. He would say things that were funny, and he would assume you were comedy people, and he could speak that way. You know, we would say terrible things, because that\u2019s what would make us laugh.\u201d<\/p>\n Of course, this being 1985, the rapidly escalating AIDS epidemic was already ravaging gay communities worldwide. The joke would have been particularly hurtful to Sweeney, who was already feeling isolated as the only gay member of the cast \u2014 indeed, the only out gay actor on network TV.<\/p>\n Chase responds in the doc: \u201cTerry Sweeney, he was very funny, this guy. I don\u2019t think he\u2019s alive anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Sweeney, very much alive and well, responds via instant message, \u201cDon\u2019t you think he is saying this and making himself look more like the ass he is!!!\u201d<\/p>\n The doc has also earned the ire of Chase\u2019s former Community co-star Yvette Nicole Brown, who firmly distanced herself from it and all attempts to reinvestigate Chase\u2019s firing from the show amid accusations of hurling racial epithets<\/a>.<\/p>\n To jog Chase\u2019s memory regarding the Sweeney incident, Zenovich reads to him from Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller\u2019s SNL oral history, Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests.<\/p>\n In it, Sweeney recounts how Chase entered his dressing room and apologized for the AIDS joke, but was \u201cfurious that he had to apologize to me.\u201d<\/p>\n Chase responds: \u201cMy memory is that he is lying, is my memory. He\u2019s not telling the truth. That isn\u2019t me. That\u2019s not who I am. And if I am that way, my life has changed, because I have to live with that now for the rest of my fucking life.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt all reflects rightly horribly on him!\u201d Sweeney says of Chase\u2019s comments in the doc.<\/p>\n As for a section of the film that recounts how Chase was abused by his parents as a child, positioned as a possible explanation for why so many of his former colleagues consider him \u201can asshole,\u201d Sweeney doesn\u2019t mince words.<\/p>\n Sweeney says, \u201cBoohoo \u2026 poor screwed up kid \u2026 so THAT\u2019s why he\u2019s so rotten!!!!!!!\u201d<\/p>\n Best of The Hollywood Reporter<\/p>\n Sign up for THR’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Terry Sweeney broke ground as Saturday Night Live\u2018s first out gay castmember during that program\u2019s 1985-86 season. Now…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379221,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[185410,71599,88,185409,2816,92],"class_list":["post-379220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-aids-epidemic","tag-chevy-chase","tag-entertainment","tag-terry-sweeney","tag-the-hollywood-reporter","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}