scene stealer

‘BoJack’ creator shares joke Netflix asked him to cut, raises money for Trans Lifeline

Raphael Bob-Waksberg, creator of the award-winning, animated Netflix series Bojack Horseman, found a unique way of raising money for a good cause.

On Tuesday, he tweeted that he’s “mystified that apparently Dave Chapelle’s [sic] deal is that he says whatever he wants and Netflix just has to air it, unedited. Is that normal, for comedians? Because Netflix once asked me to change a joke because they were worried it might upset David Fincher.”

Netflix was working with Fincher at the time, possibly developing Mindhunter, though the series wouldn’t premiere for another few years.

In a followup tweet, Bob-Waksberg concedes that it was a “dumb” scene that probably deserved to be cut, but, “my point was it’s silly for a network to pretend their hands are tied when it comes to the content they put on their network.”

Related: Dave Chappelle “punched down” the LGBTQ community…hard

“But,” he says in a third tweet, “if 100 people respond to this tweet with pics of donations they made today (any amount) to Trans Lifeline,” he’d post the censored scene.

For context, he posted: “[The scene] was originally written for episode 107, ‘Say Anything.’ It was early in the show’s run and we were still getting out some kinks as far as tone and process… Can Princess Carolyn go to the baby shower and ALSO find a cool director for her new project?”

100 donations to Trans Lifeline came in topping $2,000 raised, and Bob-Waksberg stayed true to his word:

Afterwards, he shared some thoughts:

Here are my last thoughts on this before I turn off this hell machine for the night: 1) Good pushback and feedback (if it’s good!) makes art better and if you as a network don’t know how to give it, you might as well be throwing your money down the toilet.

2) For a comedian who famously walked away from his hit TV show because he was worried he was Making Things Worse, it’s remarkable how many of his fans (and collaborators!) believe comedians have no responsibility to not Make Things Worse.

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