Comedian Dave Chappelle was attacked on stage during a comedy performance at the Hollywood Bowl Tuesday night.
Chappelle was on stage as part of the Netflix Is A Joke comedy festival taking place through Sunday, May 8.
The suspect, identified as 23-year-old Isaiah Lee, jumped on the stage and tackled Chappelle as he was leaving, Los Angeles Police Department Officer Lomeli said.
Lee was in possession of a replica gun containing a knife blade at the time of the attack, LAPD said.
Video shared on social media showed Chappelle appearing to brush off the dust up as he addressed the incident to the packed crowd.
The comedian asked repeatedly for security to remove the man from the stage and joked that the apparent attacker was a trans man.
“Thank you sir. It was a … it was a trans man,” Chappelle told the crowd.
Another video recorded outside the Hollywood Bowl showed a crowd of people around the apparent attacker as he was being placed onto a gurney and loaded into an ambulance.
Lee was transported for medical treatment at a local hospital, where he was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, Lomeli said.
He was being held on $30,000 bail, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Inmate Information Center.
A spokeswoman for Chappelle said the comedian saw record-breaking sales at the Hollywood Bowl and “refuses to allow last night’s incident to overshadow the magic of this historic moment.”
“As unfortunate and unsettling as the incident was, Chappelle went on with the show,” the spokeswoman said in a statement sent to KTLA, adding that the comedian is fully cooperating with the police investigation.
It’s unclear the exact reason the person stormed the stage, but the controversial comedian has drawn the ire of members of the LGBTQ+ community for jokes he has made at the expense of transgender people in recent comedy specials produced by Netflix.
The entertainment company has stood by Chappelle despite the comments, drawing internal criticism by some employees of the streaming giant, which culminated in an employee walkout this past October.
A Netflix spokesperson issued the following statement about Tuesday’s incident:
“We care deeply about the safety of creators and we strongly defend the right of stand-up comedians to perform on stage without fear of violence.”
Comedian Chris Rock, who was also at the event, jokingly asked if the attacker was Will Smith, the Associated Press reported.
Smith approached the stage earlier this year during a live broadcast of the Oscars and slapped Rock across the face after the comedian made a joke about Smith’s wife Jada Pinkett’s hair.
Smith received a ten-year Academy Awards ban for the slap heard around the globe. Rock has been mostly silent about the incident.
