Michelle Obama said that Dave Chappelle was her favorite guest on her IMO podcast.
“Dave Chappelle is one of the smartest people on the planet, the funniest,” Obama said at SXSW London, per Variety.
“Once he became himself, he moved back, bought a farm, and has raised his family on this farm,” Obama continued. “One of the questions was, ‘Why here?’ And he said, ‘I wanted to have the financial freedom to be courageous.’ And I was like, ‘Bars,’ you know? And that’s the truth, and what I would say to young people and to my girls: Live smaller than you need to.”
Chappelle has drawn harsh criticism for comments on the LGBTQUIA community. When Obama and her brother/co-host asked him about it, the comedian addressed it.
“People would think it’s me vs. the gay community. I never looked at it like that,” Chappelle said. “I always thought it was corporate interest and culture negotiating itself. So, you know, most of those people who were critical of what I was doing didn’t seem like they were of it. It’s like they had their faces pressed against the glass, commenting on what we were doing in there, but they weren’t in there doing it.”
“Nothing makes a comedian madder than reading his joke wrong in the paper. You know, and reading a joke is nothing like hearing one or being one,” Chappelle continued. “And the intention of a comedy show is a very unique intention. We are playing with whatever the culture is made of, and we break it down, and we get it right, or we get it wrong. But in all art, if it’s going to be good or even hopefully great, you gotta have a margin of error.”
The former First Lady also spoke about how she became a podcaster.
“It’s that courageous thing, right? The feeling that, OK, I guess we can do this because we did all these other things,” Obama explained. “The bravery makes you brave to try anything at any age,” she said. “I mean, I lived in the White House. I was the First Lady. That wasn’t my plan. I had no training for that. Wasn’t my idea! But we figured it out.”