Channing Tatum on Dave Chappelle Special: He Hurt So Many People

Channing Tatum has sounded off on the controversy surrounding Dave Chappelle's new Netflix special and the backlash from his remarks about transgender people.

Tatum, 41, posted to his Instagram Stories yesterday (October 17), seeming to show both appreciation for Chappelle's past work while also acknowledging the "hurt" the comedian has caused with his latest special, The Closer, in which he describes himself as "Team TERF," or trans-exclusionary radical feminist.

Tatum's post included a post from comic D.L. Hughley to Chappelle's 2019 speech at the Kennedy Center to accept the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. "I understand that Dave is a very dangerous person to talk about at the moment," Tatum wrote. "I understand and hate that he has hurt so many people with things he has said. This doesn't excuse anything hurtful tho to be clear."

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

The clip he referred to features Chappelle sharing the advice his mother gave him when he was a "sensitive" child.

"I was a soft kid," the comedian says in the clip. "I was sensitive, I’d cry easy and I would be scared to fistfight. My mother used to tell me this thing... 'Son, sometimes you have to be a lion so you can be the lamb you really are.’ I talked this s--- like a lion... I’m not afraid of any of you when it comes word to word, I will gab with the best of them, just so I can chill and be me."

Chapelle, 48, continued, "And that's why I love my artform, because I understand every practitioner of it. Whether I agree with them or not, I know where they're coming from. They want to be heard. They got something to say. There's something they noticed. They just want to be understood. I love this genre. It saved my life."