Chevy Chase’s colleagues, friends and family members gathered to look back on the actor’s career in a new CNN documentary – and they didn’t hold anything back.
“He didn’t really have a lot of boundaries. He was very, very free,” Goldie Hawn, who costarred with Chase in 1978’s Foul Play, said in I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not, which aired on the network in January 2026.
“We always had this chemistry that was just always there,” Beverly D’Angelo, Chase’s costar from the National Lampoon franchise, shared.
Johnny Galecki, who costarred with Chase in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, added, “I spent most days in between scenes in his trailer with him and his makeup artist lead, listening to the filthiest jokes I’ve ever heard in my life.”
Kevin Smith wasn’t afraid to address the mixed headlines about Chase’s past behavior.
“You know, I was always kind of hoping with my heart, like, they don’t get this guy, and when I met him, I understood perfectly that anything that I had ever read was probably true,” Smith declared.
Other commentators flat out called Chase an “asshole.”
“He might have been nasty to the other people, but he and I were like that,” Saturday Night Live alum Garrett Morris weighed in.
Scroll below for the biggest revelations from the documentary.
Inside Chevy Chase’s College Experience
Chevy Chase, born Cornelius Crane Chase, attended Bard College in the ‘60s. He honed in on his musical talent in school, drumming for a jazz band featuring future Steely Dan members.
“I first met Chevy in the dining commons at Bard. I noticed there was this buffoon at the table that would do very peculiar things,” Chase’s longtime friend Peter Aaron said in the doc, adding that the comedian would reach across the table for salt and purposefully knock over someone’s cup of water.
“Chevy often fell down flights of stairs and it wasn’t by accident,” Aaron continued. In college, Chase met Blythe Danner and they briefly dated.
“Blythe Danner, that was my first real love,” he confessed. “She’s a great woman, and I’ll always think highly of her.”
Chevy’s brother, Ned Chase, also appeared in the film, offering commentary on his brother’s relationship with Danner.
“Blythe and Chevy had different paths post-college,” Ned said. “Blythe is a very skilled actress, and Blythe’s career took off almost immediately. Meanwhile, Chevy did not take off immediately.”
John Cederquist, Chevy’s half-brother, shared some insight on one of Chevy’s first big purchases when he was younger.
“Our great-grandfather passed away and left an inheritance of eight grand, and Chevy took the whole amount and went and bought a used Rolls Royce,” he said. “Played a big wig in that.”
Chevy Chase’s ‘SNL’ Costars Opened Up About Cocaine Use
Chevy Chase was selected as a writer and cast member of the inaugural season of Saturday Night Live in 1975.
“I wanted him to be a writer, but he really wanted to be in the cast, and I only had room for six people,” creator Lorne Michaels said.
It was pointed out in the doc that it was common for early SNL cast members to use cocaine, especially on Tuesdays when the group worked late to prepare for that week’s show.
Former SNL writer Alan Zweibel said castmates used cocaine “to help stay up as we made money.”
“I tried every powder and pill. We all did back then,” SNL alum Dan Aykroyd admitted.
Journalist James Andrew Miller explained, “The person they worried about the most was Chevy. He was doing a lot of drugs.”
“You have a disposable income you’ve never had, and the drug cocaine is not a friend of any person,” SNL alum Rosie Shuster said. “Gilda [Radner] called it the devil’s dandruff.”
“Handling a lot of fame really fast while on drugs when you don’t have the strongest emotional foundation, that’s a lot to stay balanced, to stay upright on your surfboard on such choppy surf,” she added.
Chevy’s celebrity status continued to rise, and he noted that, “Feeling famous wasn’t a big deal to me. I didn’t care one way or the other really.”
Director Marina Zenovich could be heard off camera telling Chevy, “Let’s start again so you say it in a complete sentence.”
“You bitch,” Chevy quipped. “OK, I was on a bus, I looked up and there was a picture of me on the cover of New York Magazine and I realized, ‘That’s it. I’m famous.’”
Chevy Chase’s Marriage to Jacqueline Carlin Crumbled
Chevy Chase opened up about his relationship with second wife Jacqueline Carlin and how it led to his decision to leave SNL.
“Jacqueline, she was beautiful,” he reflected. “I would show her picture to Lorne [Michaels]. Lorne would say, ‘You don’t love her.’”
Chevy explained that Carlin would not move to NYC where he was shooting the show. “I was just off. I don’t think I understood what I really wanted,” he noted.
Ultimately, Chevy chose to leave the show in 1976 in the middle of season 2. He married Carlin that same year.
“It was shocking. We just started, we were just at the Emmys where all the grownups were finding out who were are and what we’re doing. Why now?” Michaels said of Chevy’s exit. “I said we’re just beginning here and you’re at the center of it, the forces pulling him was money powered and all that, and when Hollywood wants you, they’re pretty good at it.”
“I never had any plans ever,” Chevy reflected on life after SNL. “I had agents who had plans, so at the time I was hot so it wasn’t too tough for the agents to see that.”
Chevy said he “felt it was a mistake to leave SNL” in hindsight.
“It really was the kind of show that I was a part of making with Lorne, and it’s the kind of thing that I wanted to do,” he added.
Goldie Hawn Reflected on Chevy Chase’s Nurturing Side
Goldie Hawn shared an anecdote about Chevy Chase after costarring in Foul Play.
“I was a single parent. I had two children, [Kate] and Oliver. We went out together. We were both presenting something at an event, and then we came back together, and Oliver, he had fallen asleep in front of the television set, and he went over to him, and he picked him up and he carried him to bed, and he came down the stairs, and he looked at me and said, ‘Go up, he’s waiting for you,’ and I went upstairs, and I sat with Oliver for a while, and then I came downstairs, and he was playing the piano softly, and he looked up at me and said, ‘I can’t believe you’re doing all this alone,’” Hawn recalled. “He cared, and that’s the other part of the wild man … The guy who had faux pas. The really funny, wacky, crazy guy also has a deep heart.”
How Chevy Chase Fell in Love With Wife Jayni
After divorcing Jacqueline Carlin, Chevy Chase found love again with wife Jayni Chase.
“I met Chevy when I was 23, so I was two years out of college. It was my second job working on a Chevy Chase movie. The last thing I wanted was to fall in love,” Jayni said.
Chevy called Jayni during the documentary interview, playfully telling her, “Don’t forget to mention how much we make love every day,” to which she responded, “Ok, I’m on camera, so they might have captured that.”
Elsewhere, Chevy recalled, “I was working on a movie called Under the Rainbow. Jayni was the production coordinator in it. My trailer was pulled right up near to where the production unit was, and I could hear her voice, and I’d think, ‘What a beautiful voice,’ but I never looked to see who it was.”
One day he decided to peek through the door. “I saw her, and she was gorgeous,” he said, before revealing he asked her to go to a movie premiere with him.
In 1982, the pair walked down the aisle in a small backyard wedding of 40 people, including the caterers.
“She’s the great love of my life,” Chevy shared. The couple later welcomed daughters Caley, Emily and Cydney.
“The way he took care of me when I was pregnant and then at all the birthings of the girls and seeing him as a daddy and how happy it made him,” Jayni gushed.
Cydney, who also participated in the documentary, said, “They got through their ups and downs. I mean, it’s not perfect, but they really hold on to one another and they really love each other.”
“She’s beautiful and smart as a whip, and I have nothing much to say about her that isn’t good,” Chevy added of Jayni. “I don’t think a lot of people have the happiness I have. Marriages are breaking up. Kids do bad things. All that stuff is family stuff that’s tough.”
Chevy Chase Was Treated for Cocaine Addiction
Producer Alan Greisman said once while in Hawaii, Chevy “had somebody ship him coke in a special shaving cream can, which he could twist in a certain way and get to the coke.”
“Every so often, we’d have some cocaine flown in from the mainland. Mail’s here!” Chevy confirmed.
Chevy’s brother, Ned, remembered a time he visited his brother in Los Angeles and witnessed drug use at a gathering.
“In the center of the table there was a lazy Susan,” he remembered. “There was a pyramid. That pyramid was cocaine.”
While working on the 1981 film Modern Problems, Greisman and producer Michael Shamberg said Chevy had an issue with the script one night before filming began.
“We start to go over the script, page by page, and Chevy pours coke on the table and starts sniffing it, as though you’re supposed to be having a rational discussion about the movie … and he’s just snorting coke like there’s no tomorrow,” Greisman said.
Shamberg said that Chevy did not share the cocaine with anyone else. “Who does cocaine alone, in front of other people?” he wondered.
Chevy was later treated at the Betty Ford Clinic for his cocaine addiction after doctors brought it to Jayni’s attention. He left the facility after a week.
The Terry Sweeney Incident
Director Marina Zenovich called attention to the Terry Sweeney incident that Chevy Chase was involved in on SNL when he returned to guest host in 1985, where Chevy suggested an offensive skit about Sweeney’s sexuality. (Sweeney made history as the first openly gay cast member on SNL.)
“You said something to Sweeney like, ‘Oh, you’re the gay guy. Why don’t we ask if you have AIDS? And every week, we weigh you,’” Zenovich said.
“I think Chevy was just being Chevy,” Lorne Michaels said of the incident. “We would say terrible things because that’s what would make us laugh.”
“Terry Sweeney. He was very funny. This guy, I don’t think he’s alive anymore Terry Sweeney. I hope he isn’t because I don’t want you talking to him about this,” Chevy said before Zenovich informed him Sweeney is still alive.
Zenovich then read an excerpt from a book detailing the alleged incident, but Chevy remembered some things differently.
“None of that’s true,” Chevy claimed. “I would remember that. Yeah, that I was angry, that I had to apologize to him. Good God, Chevy, what’s wrong with you? That’s just not true. My memory is, he’s lying. He’s not telling the truth. That isn’t me, that isn’t how 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 f***ing life because you guys got a book out and read it to me.”
Sweeney declined to participate in the documentary.
Chevy Chase Detailed Alleged Abuse as a Child
Chevy Chase claimed his stepfather, John Cederquist, would “lash out” at him when he was a child and perceived the actor as “insolent.” Chevy recalled an alleged incident where Cederquist “started slapping me across the back of the head.”
He also alleged his mother, Cathalene Parker Browning, physically abused him.
“The first time we stayed together, the first time I went to wake him up, he shuddered,” Jayni said. “And he explained, ‘Well, my mother would wake me up slapping me.’ From the time he was a little guy, wham.”
“Our mother was a bag of cats. Certainly on the schizoid spectrum,” Chevy’s half-brother, also named John Cedarquist, said.
“I felt like this was an out-of-control woman, who I look back on, and I say, ‘I feel sorry for her.’ She had her own issues. Bad ones, but she was physically abusive to me,” Chevy claimed.
The ‘Community’ Drama Was Addressed
Community director Jay Chandrasekhar explained what led to Chevy Chase leaving Community for good.
“[Dan] Harmon writes this, a blackface hand-puppet routine,” Chandrasekhar explained of a season 4 episode, in which Chevy used a racial slur in between filming scenes. “The character is a little tone deaf on this thing. Now had it been Chevy in his heyday, he would’ve been totally fine. He said something to Yvette [Nicole Brown]. I know that there was a history between those two around race, and she got up and stormed out of there. Chevy storms off.”
“The producer said Yvette would not come back on set unless Chevy apologized,” he continued. “He comes back on the set, and he goes, ‘Hey man, I didn’t say anything.’ And I’m like: ‘No, I know. I know.’ He goes, ‘You know me and Richard Pryor, I used to call Richard Pryor the n-word. He used to call me The Honkey, and we loved each other.’ And I’m like, ‘I know, man. I love that bit.’”
“I said, you know, can we have a little apology? He goes, ‘For what?’ I said, ‘Can we just make the goddamn show?’”
Chandrasekhar said the next day, Chevy showed up to set angry.
“Somebody has leaked that there was a racial incident to The Hollywood Reporter at two in the f***ing morning. There are 50-75 extras there so you’re like, this shouldn’t have happened. He comes storming onto the set and he goes, ‘Who f***ed me over? and he goes, “One of you mother f***ers said to The Hollywood Reporter, my career is ruined. I’m ruined.’ Like it’s a full meltdown. ‘F*** all of you.’ And I’m like, ‘Alright let’s shoot the scene.’ He never ended up coming back after that.”
In a subsequent interview with The New York Times following the documentary’s release, Chase said of his exit, “It was too great a misunderstanding of what I was saying and not saying. I thought that there was at least one person — and another who, for some ungodly reason, didn’t get me, didn’t know who I was, or didn’t realize for one second I’m not racist. They were too young to be aware of my work. Instead, there was some sort of visceral reaction from them.”
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