Why (And How) Chevy Chase Filmed Community Season 5's Hologram Scene
Chevy Chase's time on "Community" was ... complicated. At the beginning of a show, having a big comedy name like Chase on board was part of the reason "Community" existed at all; the rest of the cast was basically seen as the guy from "The Soup" and people you may have seen in something maybe. For a while, Chase's self-centered, bigoted Pierce Hawthorne was an integral part of the show. He had the freedom to do all the classic buffoonery he made his name on and felt like a key part of the group despite being such an outlier. In season 2, when the decision was made to essentially turn Pierce into the main antagonist, Chase thrived and delivered some of the finest moments of the show.
Behind the scenes, though, things were not great. If you listen to just about any interview with anyone who worked on that show, you will know that Chase was an exceptionally difficult person to work with, alongside very credible accusations of racism. On a creative level, he often didn't understand why the material he was performing was funny in the slightest. Eventually, Chase and creator Dan Harmon were doing more than just butting heads, culminating in Harmon playing a rage-fueled voicemail from Chase at a live Harmontown show. Harmon was fired after "Community" season 3, and Chase left the show in the midst of season 4.
Neither were done with the series though. Dan Harmon was rehired for season 5 after the "gas leak year," and he felt that Pierce Hawthorne's final appearance couldn't have been just some abrupt departure. So, he reached out to the adversarial actor to do one final scene in the season 5 premiere "Repilot" — a scene where Chase wouldn't have to interact with anyone.
'We had to keep it secret'
In the fantastic "Community" season 5 premiere, Joel McHale's Jeff Winger comes across a hologram of Chevy Chase's Pierce, acting as an ad for the Pierce Hawthorne Museum of Gender Sensitivity and Sexual Potency. It's an incredibly surprising moment that simultaneously works as a funny last look at Pierce, and perfectly crystallizes why this show should continue for the remaining characters to grow. It was also a surprise to everyone else on the show, as the only cast member who knew about the cameo was Joel McHale. Talking to Uproxx in 2014, Dan Harmon recalled how that cameo came to be following his falling-out with Chase:
"Chris [McKenna] and I thought about the possibility of this hologram thing as being a work around and I texted him and he immediately said yes. And then we just made it work. We had to keep it secret from everybody so we wrote a scene into the first episode where the thing that turns Joel after he walks away with the power to destroy Greendale is he happens upon Star-Burns, who's been living in a dumpster. Joel was the only one to know for a while because he had to come in and say 'Pierce' to an empty space in front of a motion control camera ... We just wanted to control that surprise as much as we could."
Considering that we learn of Pierce's death two episodes later, we never see Chevy Chase again in the series, there's not much chance of him appearing in the forthcoming movie outside of a flashback or another hologram. I know Chase is a sore spot for many who love "Community," including its own cast and crew, but for the sake of the series, I'm glad the character got this final moment.