National Lampoon’s Vacation star Anthony Michael Hall has claimed he was mocked by his on-screen father, Chevy Chase, while filming.
Hall played 12-year-old Rusty Griswold in the film, starring alongside Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, and Dana Barron as the core family members who embark on a hectic road trip to an amusement park.
During a cast reunion at Fan Expo Chicago earlier this month, Hall recalled reshooting the ending of the 1983 film a year after he first started working on the movie, since test audiences wanted something different than what had been filmed.
“Puberty kicked in for me,” he recalled about the reshoot during the cast reunion with Chase, as reported by Entertainment Weekly. “I was a foot taller and like a different kid.”
“Guess who pointed the s*** out right away and made me feel really good about it on set,” he sarcastically added.
He then revealed that Chase, who's known for his controversial sense of humor, was the one who made fun of him on set.
“I just remember the autograph you wrote me when we wrapped. He goes, ‘To Anthony, you're a regular Robby Benson,’” Hall recalled to Chase, referring to a teen idol in the ‘70s known for his roles in Ode to Billy Joe and Ice Castles. “No mas, no mas.”
However, Chase, who played Rusty’s dad, Clark, had more to say in the autograph. “And then it was also, ‘If you're going blind, you're doing it right,’” Hall added.
Later in the conversation at Fan Expo, Barron, who played Rusty’s sister Audrey, recalled the station wagon the Griswolds used on the road trip, noting she “loved that car.” She also said there was a scene in the vehicle where Hall’s character got food “stuck in his teeth.”
“By the way, you forgot the pimples,” she recalled to Hall. “Remember, Chevy mentioned all the pimples on your face.”
However, Hall doesn’t have any animosity towards Chase for these remarks.
“This is why I love being your son for 40 years,” he told the former Saturday Night Live cast member. “I love you.”
Hall isn’t the only person in the entertainment industry who’s spoken out about Chase’s controversial sense of humor. In December, filmmaker Chris Columbus said he was supposed to work on National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, the third film in the franchise, but stepped away due to a comment made by Chase.
“I was signed on… and then I met Chevy Chase. Even given my situation at the time, where I desperately needed to make a film, I realized I couldn’t work with the guy,” he told Vanity Fair at the time. “I was one of the many who couldn’t work with him. And I called John and I said, ‘This is really hard for me, but I can’t do this movie with Chevy Chase.’”
Chase has a history of being involved in conflict on set, including when he filmed the hit sitcom, Community. According to the sitcom’s creator, Dan Harmon, Chase was the actor who would improvise the most. In 2012, it was reported that Chase allegedly used a racial slur on set while questioning a line of dialogue involving Black characters played by Donald Glover and Yvette Nicole Brown.
A source told The Hollywood Reporter at the time that Chase “apologized immediately,” and came to a mutual agreement with NBC to leave the show.
Six years later, in a 2018 interview with The New Yorker, Harmon claimed Chase would try to disrupt Glover’s scenes and “make racial cracks between takes” because he was “jealous” of his co-star’s talent.
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