Dave Chappelle has dropped the trailer for his new Netflix comedy special The Dreamer, out on December 31.
On Sunday, the comedian released a trailer for the special, featuring Morgan Freeman delivering one of his trademark voiceovers as Chappelle takes the stage. “What do you dream about? Not the ones when you go to sleep; the ones you hold in your heart,” Freeman asks in the teaser. “Don’t be intimidated by the audacity of your dream. Be inspired by it.”
The trailer then cuts to Chappelle and Freeman watching The Dreamer together, with Freeman’s narration continuing, “What happens to a dream deferred? Lucky for Dave, he doesn’t know.”
The hour-long The Dreamer, recorded at a stop at the Lincoln Theater in Chappelle’s hometown of Washington, D.C., reunites the comedian with director Stan Lathan, who helmed his previous six Netflix specials.
The Dreamer marks Chappelle’s first Netflix release since his What’s in a Name? in 2022, which captured the comedian’s 40-minute speech to his alma mater, the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. His last Netflix comedy special was 2021’s The Closer, which came under fire and sparked Netflix employee walkouts over its transphobic material.
One of Chappelle’s offending lines in The Closer was “Gender is a fact. Every human being in this room, every human being on Earth, had to pass through the legs of a woman to be on Earth. That is a fact.”
In The Closer, Chappelle also waded into the controversy surrounding DaBaby, who was criticized for his homophobic remarks at the Rolling Loud festival and subsequently removed from several festival dates. Chappelle said that he wanted to “negotiate the release of DaBaby” with the LGBTQ community. He then went on to question why DaBaby was canceled for his homophobic comments rather than for shooting a man in the past.
It’s unclear if The Dreamer will boast similarly controversial bits, but Netflix said of the special in its description, “From his onstage tackle to the slap heard round the world, Dave Chappelle lets loose in this freewheeling and unfiltered stand-up comedy special,” suggesting topics include when the comedian was assaulted onstage at the Hollywood Bowl as well as Will Smith’s Oscars slap of Chris Rock.
