{"id":488774,"date":"2026-01-03T05:57:18","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T05:57:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/488774\/"},"modified":"2026-01-03T05:57:18","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T05:57:18","slug":"slapped-him-locked-in-cellar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/488774\/","title":{"rendered":"Slapped Him, Locked in Cellar"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn a revealing new documentary about his life and career, Chevy Chase<\/a> alleges that he suffered physical abuse as a child at the hands of his mother and stepfather.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn \u201cI\u2019m Chevy Chase and You\u2019re Not,\u201d which debuted Jan. 1 on CNN, Chase and his family and friends said he was beaten, locked in a closet and continually woken up with violence.<\/p>\n

\n\tChase\u2019s parents divorced when he was about 4 years old, and both of them quickly remarried. He described his stepfather, John Cederquist, as \u201chumorless.\u201d Chase\u2019s stepbrother, also named John Cederquist, said, \u201cMy father had a flash anger, and he could lash out with a single blow\u2026He did not take to anything that he perceived as insolence. Chevy was insolent.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tChase\u2019s wife, Jayni, said the first time she stayed overnight with Chase and woke him up, he \u201cshuddered.\u201d \u201cHe explained, \u2018Well, my mother would wake me up slapping me.\u2019 From the time he was a little guy, wham!\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\n\tChase\u2019s mother, Cathalene Browning, is described in the documentary as \u201ca bag of cats, certainly on the schizoid spectrum.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis was an out-of-control woman who I look back on and I say I feel sorry for her,\u201d Chase said. \u201cShe had her own issues \u2014 bad ones. But, she was physically abusive to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPeter Aaron, a friend of the comedian\u2019s, said Chase told him stories about the \u201cterrible things that would happen to him as a young man \u2014 things like being locked in the closet.\u201d Chase\u2019s brother, Ned, added, \u201cThere was a cellar, and he was sent down there because of really messing up in school.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tIn an interview with The New York Times<\/a> published Friday, Chase alluded to being \u201cslapped with a yardstick on your bare ass and on the backs of your legs until they\u2019re so bruised that somebody else notices.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tChase would get punished for receiving poor grades in school, but, ironically, he said he was failing academically because of the abuse. \u201cWhereas others would concentrate on their homework, I didn\u2019t have a chance at that,\u201d he said. \u201cI was always worried about one thing or another that had to do with my own health.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tChase detailed one incident in which he and Ned were eating breakfast, and their stepfather came downstairs \u201cand started slapping me across the back of the head.\u201d Ned recalled, \u201cI stood up and made it clear I didn\u2019t think this was a time for corporal punishment. And John Cederquist sat down, and I sat down.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI knew at that time that Ned was there for me,\u201d Chase said. \u201cThat was a big moment for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen asked by director Marina Zenovich if there was a time when Chase walked away from his mother and stepfather and never saw them again, Chase pretended to swat a fly on his forehead, then licked his fingers as if eating the imaginary bug. \u201cSorry?\u201d he asked, half-smiling.<\/p>\n

\n\tChase\u2019s family and friends described how his trauma informed his comedy \u2014 a \u201ccoping mechanism\u201d \u2014 and how it may have contributed to his struggles with depression in his later life. \u201cIt shaped him. He used comedy, he used humor as a way to mask what was going on inside. And that\u2019s continued. It continues to this day,\u201d said Emily Chase, his youngest daughter. \u201cHe will joke around from morning until night, and you won\u2019t know what\u2019s going on. \u2026 That\u2019s how he always dealt with problems in his life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019m Chevy Chase and You\u2019re Not\u201d is now available to watch on CNN\u2019s streaming platforms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a revealing new documentary about his life and career, Chevy Chase alleges that he suffered physical abuse…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":488775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[79084,171,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-488774","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-chevy-chase","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115829633415325454","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=488774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/488774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/488775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=488774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=488774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=488774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}