Dave Chappelle Finally Reveals Why He Refused $50M And Left 'Chappelle's Show'

Dave Chappelle he has finally come clean about his departure from the show that launched him into comedy history.

"Chappelle's Show," and really anything to come from the mind of Dave Chappelle during the early 2000s, will forever remain a cultural touchstone. It was social commentary that began to harness the idea of "viral" content during the early ages of the modern internet while simultaneously paving the road for hundreds of followers to come.

Then, in 2006, it ended. Out of the blue, new episodes stopped being made and Dave Chappelle seemingly fell off the the face of the planet.

More than 10 years since his show left the air, the 43-year-old comic is finally in the process of mounting a comeback with the Tuesday night release of his twin Netflix specials.

He opened up to "CBS This Morning" about his struggles with fame, explaining why he left the show,

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.

Later going on to say,

'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.'

Chappelle isn't the same person as he was back in the mid-20oos. He says,

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.

There is still clear bad blood between Chappelle and Comedy Central. He explains,

I fought the network very hard so that those conventions [on the show] could come to fruition. So, like the first episode I do, that black white supremacist sketch — it's like, 'Well, that's 10 minutes long. It should be five minutes long.' Why should it be five minutes long? These types of conventions. I fought very hard. So when I watch 'Key & Peele' and I see they're doing a format that I created, and at the end of the show, it says, 'Created by Key & Peele,' that hurts my feelings.

Well, we're happy you're back, Dave! Please don't leave again?

Citations: Dave Chappelle: 'Fame is a horrifying concept' (Page Six)