Dear White People showrunner on why she is boycotting Netflix over Dave Chappelle special
‘I never loved Dave’s trans material before but this time it felt different,’ Jaclyn Moore said
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Your support makes all the difference.Dear White People’s showrunner Jaclyn Moore has revealed the reason behind why she’s “done” with Netflix after the release of Dave Chappelle’s special The Closer.
Following an announcement on Twitter on Wednesday (6 October) that she would no longer work with Netflix after watching Chappelle making numerous jokes about trans women, Moore has further discussed the reason behind her decision in an interview with Variety.
“I never loved Dave’s trans material before but this time it felt different,” said Moore, who transitioned during the pandemic. “This is the first time I felt like, ‘Oh, people are laughing at this joke and they’re agreeing that it’s absurd to call me a woman.’”
The Queer as Folk producer said she has “no desire” to cancel Chappelle as “he should make whatever he wants to make”, however, she is surprised that Netflix thought The Closer “was a live special”.
“They (Netflix) saw this and were like, ‘Yeah this seems okay to put out there,’” Moore said. “I don’t know how it got passed because I will say having worked on a show [with Netflix], I know that they think about these things and have conversations about these things.”
When asked whether she wants Netflix to pull this special, Moore said she doesn’t think that’s a “reasonable outcome”, and instead she wants “companies to hire trans people to work there who can say, ‘Hey, we sure about this?’”
“I don’t know what Netflix should do, but I feel something needs to be done. Whether that’s removing part of this special, whether that’s amending the special in some way, I don’t know,” she added.
Moore concluded by saying that she is “not going to be taking anything to Netflix for the time being”, adding: “I don’t know what it will take for me to feel comfortable in changing that.”
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