The three-hour "SNL 50" anniversary special featured throwback skits, including a song from Adam Sandler looking back on the show's history.
- Comedian Chevy Chase is the subject of CNN's documentary premiering Jan. 1, 2026.
- Chevy Chase's complicated legacy is examined in the documentary, which revisits a "meltdown" on the set of the sitcom "Community" in 2012.
- Chevy Chase also addresses incidents stemming from his 1985 return to "SNL," in which a cast member described him as "a monster."
Far from a "Christmas Vacation," CNN's Chevy Chase documentary doesn't shy away from the actor's marred legacy.
"Chevy's a very smart guy," says Marina Zenovich, director of "I'm Chevy Chase and You're Not" (premiering New Year's Day, 8 ET/PT). "This wasn't going to be a hagiography. So of course I'm going to dig into those things."
Featuring interviews with Chase's family - his wife of 43 years, Jayni, their three daughters, and Chase's brothers - as well as his costars, including Dan Aykroyd, Beverly D'Angelo, Goldie Hawn and Martin Short - the film revisits Chase's early days of living in a cockroach-filled apartment on Lexington Avenue in New York City and bowing out as the drummer of the band that would become Steely Dan.
In the documentary, the actor also reveals how hurt he was when he wasn't included in a sketch for February's 50th anniversary of "Saturday Night Live" (he was a member of the show's inaugural cast) and the impact of heart failure, which has affected his memory. The film also addresses his shadow side, which struggled with a reliance on cocaine and alcohol and had a "full meltdown" on set.
Chevy Chase's abusive stepfather, 'out of control' mom
Chase's parents divorced when he was around 4. His mother, Cathalene, remarried to a man named John Cederquist. He "had a flash anger," Chase's half-brother, also named John Cederquist, says, "and he could lash out with a single blow and no talk before or after. He did not take to anything that he perceived as insolence. Chevy was insolent."
Chase, now 82, remembers being slapped at breakfast by his stepfather; he says his mother was also abusive. In the documentary, Chase says he was raised by "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."
Wife Jayni says in the film: "The first time we stayed together, the first time I went to wake him up, he shuddered. And he explained, 'Well, my mother would wake me up slapping me,' from the time he was a little guy."
"Our mother was a bag of cats," Chase's brother John says,"certainly on the schizoid spectrum."
Chevy Chase enters rehab for cocaine addiction
Others at "Saturday Night Live" took drugs to keep up with the demands of a live weekly sketch show, but "the person that they worried about the most was Chevy," says James Andrew Miller, coauthor of "Live From New York." "He was doing a lot of drugs."
Producer Alan Greisman recalls a vacation to Hawaii in 1981 when Chase "had somebody ship him many ounces of coke in a special shaving cream can, which you could twist in a certain way and get to the coke."
Chase's brother Ned also recalls cocaine being a table centerpiece at a dinner in LA. "In the center of the table, there was, like, a lazy Susan" with a pyramid on it, Ned says. "That pyramid was cocaine."
The comedian's cocaine use became unavoidable in 1986 when a doctor informed Jayni of her husband's addiction. So they held an intervention. "He said, 'I know I need to stop, and I know I need help,'" Jayni remembers.
That year, Chase was admitted to the Betty Ford treatment center in Rancho Mirage, California, telling the public it was for a dependency on painkillers. "But after a week, he called me and begged me to come pick him up," Jayni says.
Chevy Chase denies Terry Sweeney's account of 'SNL' hosting
When Chase returned to host "SNL" in 1985, he clashed with the show's first openly gay cast member, Terry Sweeney. Jon Lovitz recalled in the book "Live From New York" that Chase asked Sweeney to lick his testicles.
"I think Chevy was just being Chevy," "SNL" creator Lorne Michaels says. "We would say terrible things because that's what would make us laugh."
Sweeney, who declined to be interviewed for the documentary, described Chase as "a monster" in the "SNL" oral history "Live From New York." He "insulted everybody," Sweeney said, and suggested a sketch in which Sweeney contracted AIDS and is weighed weekly.
Hearing the joke in the documentary makes Chase laugh uncomfortably. "That's the worst," he assesses before expressing his hope that Sweeney is dead, "because I don't want you talking to him about this."
When a member of the crew suggests a reading from "Live From New York," Chase replies: "Oh, this is great, thanks. This will make my day."
Sweeney wrote in the book that Chase was asked to apologize and was "really furious" about that. "None of that's true," Chase insists. "I would remember that ... that I was angry, that I had to apologize to him. ... My memory is that he's lying, is my memory. He's not telling the truth."
Sweeney, in an online conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, doubled down on his loathing of Chase. "It all reflects rightly horribly on him!" Sweeney told the outlet. Sweeney also doesn't allow Chase's childhood abuse to excuse his behavior.
"Boohoo ... poor screwed up kid ... so THAT's why he's so rotten!!!!!!!" Sweeney told the outlet.
Chevy Chase's 'meltdown' on the set of 'Community'
Jay Chandrasekhar, who directed episodes of "Community" (2009-2015), noticed "a little bit of negativity around Chevy and rest of the cast." Chandrasekhar says that to minimize Chase's time on set with costars Alison Brie, Yvette Nicole Brown, Donald Glover, Gillian Jacobs, Ken Jeong and Joel McHale, series creator Dan Harmon broke Chase's character’s legs in Season 2 to isolate him.
Jayni says Chase was viewed as “the old fart” on the show and noticed him drinking heavily.
“He was not an alcoholic all those years,” she says. “But alcoholism is a whole different level. It really takes over—and that was hard for him to stop.”
Chase had concerns about his character, Pierce Hawthorne.
“They were writing his character more and more bigoted,” Chase’s daughter Caley says,“and he was getting upset about it.”
“Harmon writes this,a blackface hand-puppet routine,”Chandrasekhar says,referencing an episode in Season 4 filmed in 2012 that he directed.“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.I know that there was a history between those two around race,and she got up and stormed out of there.Chevy storms off.”
At the time,The Hollywood Reporter, citing an unidentified source,said Chase used a racial slur “while venting his ongoing frustration with his character ... when questioning the dialogue in a scene” with Brown and Glover,w ho are Black.“The slur was not directed at them,”the source says.
Chandrasekhar says in the documentary that Brown refused to resume filming unless Chase apologized.
“He comes back on the set,and he goes,’Hey man,I didn’t say anything,’”Chandrasekhar says.“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.’”
When Chandrasekhar asked for an apology,says Chase replied,“For what?”
According to The Hollywood Reporter's 2012 report,chase “apologized immediately.”
Chandrasekhar says that after the incident made news,chase “comes storming onto the set,and he goes,’Who f----- me over?...My career is ruined.I’m ruined!’”
“It’s a full meltdown,”Chandrasekhar adds.“‘F--- all of you!’”
Pierce’s death was revealed in Season 5.