Why Was Joel McHale an “A**Hole” on the Set of ‘Community'

I was an early adopter of Arrested Development. It’s not a brag, just the result of being a 14-year-old with little to do on Sunday nights and the habit of watching anything that followed The Simpsons. If a show was good, I would follow it to its next time slot. I stuck with Arrested Development to the bitter end, when its final four episodes were aired against the opening ceremony of the 2006 Winter Olympics (and didn’t even air properly in my neck of the woods). Something miraculous would happen years later when the show was given a second life on Netflix, followed by another miraculous occurrence: everyone was suddenly an Arrested Development fan.

The show deserved the excitement its revival was garnering. I was pleased as punch to see support for one of my favorite shows grow, but I couldn’t shake one thing. If all these people had loved the show when it aired, there wouldn’t have been a need for a revival. This idea snowballed in my head as I watched most of these new fans react to the inventive (and once again ahead of its time) fourth season of the show with horror. Their complaints lead to a dumbed down fifth and final season that was more obsessed with getting the cast in the same room than with telling a good story.

What does any of this have to do with Community?! I’m glad you asked (but I was getting there, gawd, be patient). Community was a show that was consistently on life support despite being loved by those who watched. It also had a streaming revival that wasn’t as well received as its earlier seasons. But Community’s existence was a bit more chaotic, as its showrunner and creator, Dan Harmon, was replaced, but later brought back, and also Chevy Chase was running around the set screaming racial slurs and homophobic limericks (or something along those lines).

Despite getting some negative press during its run, Community needed attention on the show, which has Joel McHale wishing he was maybe a bit nicer to reporters who covered the NBC sitcom. “The only time — well, I’ve been an a**hole many times — but I would always call out reporters,” McHale noted on Jesse Tyler Ferguson’s Dinner’s On Me podcast. “And they’d be like, ‘Such a great show. It’s just so amazing.’ And it would be one thing if we were on a red carpet and they were like, here’s this guy from this thing.” McHale would offer standard niceties, minus one big exception, saying, “But it was like, if you come to set, if you’re sitting on our set, you should have like done some research. You should know what show this is.”

The actor revealed that he would not be kind to visiting reporters and would even grill them over details of the show. He wouldn’t let it go, either, needling them over their lack of knowledge. He claims it left an impression on some of them. “I’ve had reporters come back and just be like, ‘You really got me,’” he explained. “And I was like, ‘Yeah, I probably should just enjoy the promotion and not call people out.’” The last episode of Community aired almost ten years ago, so it makes sense that McHale has made peace, and apologized in a way, for his treatment of visiting reporters. But I understand his frustration.

Community was doing something special, but it was struggling. If you are putting in that amount of hard work, it would be annoying if people weren’t giving you the proper due, be it reporters or audience members. Perhaps, if people were covering the show with the same excitement (or, at least, interest) as its fans, it may not have faced the same fate, or at least could have helped keep Yahoo! Screen alive.