In His Own Words

"I'm not crazy. I'm not smoking crack. I'm definitely stressed out."

That's the update from Dave Chappelle, who, after being MIA for the past few weeks, has turned up in South Africa, where he granted a interview to Time magazine for its new issue.
The entertainer skipped out on Chappelle's Show, his hit Comedy Central sketch series, late last month, forcing the cable net to shut down production and indefinitely postpone the May 31 premiere date of the third season--and causing headline-making speculation into why Chappelle disappeared and where exactly disappeared to.

Newsweek took a stab at the former, reporting last week that friends blamed Chappelle's meltdown on a combination of too much partying, overwhelming pressure to live up to his $50 million contract and creative sparring with Comedy Central over the direction of his show. Entertainment Weekly, meantime, reported that Chappelle checked himself into a psychiatric hospital in South Africa for undisclosed treatment.

To Time, Chappelle cops to meeting with a psychiatrist for one 40-minute session after arriving in South Africa, but he says he's staying with a family friend. "I'm not in a mental facility," he says in a Q&A that took place Friday and lasted 90 minutes.

A converted Muslim, he says he flew to the country last month for a "spiritual retreat."
"I'm a difficult kind of dude....I have trust issues.," he says. "There were some things about myself that I didn't like. People got to take inventory from time to time. That's what this [coming to South Africa] is for.

"I'm an introspective dude. I enjoy my own thoughts sometimes. And I've been doing a lot of thinking here," he tells the magazine.

As for the other explanations for his abrupt absence. "There were things that overwhelmed me," he says. "But not in the way that people are saying. I haven't spent any of the money. All that stuff about partying and taking crack is not true.

"I haven't smoked marijuana in months. My drugs these days are nicotine and coffee."
What he does admit to is struggling with expectations--his fans', the network's, but mostly his own--for the third season of Chappelle's Show.

"My personal feeling is I didn't like the direction of the show. I was trying to explain it to people, and no one was feeling me. There's a lot of resistance to my opinions, so I decided, Let me remove myself from this situation.

"So I figured, let me just cut myself off from everybody, take a minute and pull a Flintstone--stop a speeding car by using my bare feet as the brakes."

Chappelle says he first shut down production late last year after he became unsatisfied with the first batch of season-three skits. That led Comedy Central to bump the original February premiere date to May--a delay initially reported as due to a Chappelle "illness" and subsequent inability to stockpile enough scripts to meet the launch.

Now, a peeved Comedy Central boss Doug Herzog, suddenly scrambling to replace one of his biggest hits, says he doesn't foresee Chappelle's Show back on the air in 2005. For his part, Chappelle tells Time he is unsure of when he will be back in the States or what will happen to his titular series.

"When I get back, [I hope] everything will be up and running, or we'll make other arrangements. I don't know what the lay of the land is.

"I want to make sure I'm dancing and not shuffling," he continues. "What ever decisions I make right now I'm going to have live with. Your soul is priceless." The first two seasons of his show "had a real spirit to them," he says. "I want to make sure whatever I do has spirit."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Damn media had us thinking he's looney tunes.