Usually, director Rikki Hughes has months to prepare for a Dave Chappelle special. For the Emmy-nominated Dave Chappelle: The Unstoppable, she had two days.
As a frequent collaborator with Dave Chappelle, director Rikki Hughes says each Netflix comedy special is different.
“One thing we love about Dave is he’s always ahead of the curve,” says Hughes. “So he’s always doing something before anyone else does. So it keeps us on our toes, that’s for sure.”
The Emmy-nominated special, Dave Chappelle: The Unstoppable, certainly kept Hughes on her toes, as she had little time to prepare ahead of the recording.
“We had been on the road for a while, and a lot of unrest was happening in our country, so we knew that Dave had been thinking about things, and the conversations have been changing. And he’s like, ‘When we do this show in D.C., let’s take this and let’s do something a little different. Let’s really do it from the vantage point of like, what’s an audience member feel like? What does a fan feel like to be at these shows?’ So, it was last minute; usually, we have months to prepare for a special with him. This was like a day or two before. I record everything he does, but recording a special takes something different, a different type of preparation. And it was interesting because we just really followed him and what was happening. So unlike our other specials, this wasn’t one that was this really overly glossed, pristine piece. It felt more in the moment.”
“Let’s Do Something a Little Different”
Despite having very limited time, Hughes was very strategic about where they put cameras. While they sometimes shoot with 13 or 14 cameras, for this one, they only had six.
“So that was a challenge in itself,” says Hughes. “We’re in an arena, which is challenging, and the in-the-round is even more challenging, because you don’t know when he’s going to turn around. You don’t know when you’re going to capture it.”
The arena had also just undergone renovations, which meant many resources weren’t available, and a lot of adjustments had to be made.
“I had no communication with my camera, my cam ops, because of the renovations,” says Hughes. “So that was difficult. I couldn’t see what they’re doing. I just had to really trust and really direct from instinct on it, which was challenging, especially when it’s so important, the material that he’s doing, that we really captured in a way. We just leaned into exactly what we received. And that’s the special that you guys got to see. And we didn’t even know if we were going to release it at the time either. ”
Dave Chappelle Receiving the Mark Twain Prize Cold Open
In the cold open, the special flashbacks to when Chappelle won the Mark Twain Prize in 2019, and the quote his mother told him: “Sometimes you have to show the people the lion that you are.”
“Every special, we peel back a layer of the onion and see a little more of him,” said Hughes. “And the Mark Twain Award was special. It was the first time the Mark Twain Awards had ever been shown on Netflix. He had his mom in the audience. And so to bring it back and knowing that in this moment, he had to be the lion. He had to say the things that people were afraid of or hadn’t said. We were in a place where normally the arts community is the one that really speaks out. I think the arts have been painfully quiet during this unrest and turmoil within our country.”
Chappelle always leaves an impression in his standup, but this time, in what he was wearing: a camo Colin Kaepernick jacket. When he entered the stage, it felt almost like a boxer entering the ring.
“We didn’t realize that it was going to really spark that mark. And then our photographer, Mathieu Bitton, did an amazing job at just capturing the back of him sitting on the stool with the smoke and the jacket. And it just felt really iconic from the moment we saw that snapshot.”
The Longest Closer of His Life
Not only did Hughes have very little time to prepare for this special, but she also was tasked with capturing what Chappelle called “the longest closer” of his life.
“We don’t always know where he’s going. When he calls for, ‘Let’s do the lights,’ and the change in lights, I knew he meant the club, like, what does it feel like when you have an intimate moment in the club? And how do you take something that we haven’t seen? And that’s people in a huge arena, 20,000 people, but you make it feel intimate as if he’s just speaking to you. That was a challenge, and so once he said, ‘Give me these other lights,’ we go down to a more intimate lighting setting. At that point, you just go along for the ride. And he really feeds off of the audience.”
Dave Chappelle: The Unstoppable is streaming on Netflix.
