Channing Tatum weighs in on Dave Chappelle controversy: ‘I hate that he has hurt so many people’

Channing Tatum has shared his thoughts on the controversy surrounding Dave Chappelle’s recent Netflix comedy special, The Closer.

Chappelle had been widely criticised for remarks made about transgender people in the special, including the declaration that he was “team Terf” [trans-exclusionary radical feminist].

On Instagram, Tatum shared a clip from Chappelle’s 2019 speech at Washington, DC’s Kennedy Center, when he accepted the Mark Twain Prize for American Humour, which Tatum said had “healed” him.

“I understand that Dave is a very dangerous person to talk about at the moment,” wrote the Magic Mike star. “I understand and hate that he has hurt so many people with things he has said.

“Any human can hurt someone (usually cause they’re hurt) but any human can heal and heal others just the same,” he added. “This little piece healed me back in the day. I can’t forget that.”

In the clip, Chappelle shared advice his mother gave him when he was a “sensitive” and “soft” little kid. She told him to “be a lion so you can be the lamb you really are”.

He then talks about his love of comedy, saying that he “understood every practitioner of it” and that it had “saved my life”.

In his Instagram post, Tatum added: “This does not excuse anything hurtful tho to be clear.”