Who was Pierce Hawthorne in Community?

Show

Community

Played by

Chevy Chase

First episode

“Pilot”Season 1, Episode 1, aired September 17, 2009

Role

Main cast

Network

NBC

Occupation

Moist towelette heir and perennial student

Show run

2009 to 2015Its sixth and final season streamed on Yahoo! Screen.

Also known as

Piercinald Hawthorne, Hawthorne

Pierce Hawthorne is the eccentric, aging millionaire of the Greendale study group, heir to the Hawthorne Wipes moist towelette fortune. Played by Chevy Chase, he is often the group's biggest problem and, now and then, its most surprising source of wisdom.

On Community, Pierce Hawthorne's story runs through Troy Barnes (Former Roommate), Shirley Bennett (Business Partner), Jeff Winger (Rival), Annie Edison (Favorite Friend), and Britta Perry (Friend).

Who was Pierce Hawthorne?

Pierce is the son of Cornelius Hawthorne, whose company Hawthorne Wipes made the family rich on moist towelettes. He has been taking classes at Greendale for about a decade when the series begins, officially to keep his mind active and really to find friends, and he joins the Spanish study group in the pilot as its oldest member by far.

He claims a long list of talents, from magic to hypnotherapy to keyboard playing, and he has been married seven times. Behind the bluster is a lonely man shaped by a cold, bigoted father, and what he wants most is to belong.

Personality and comedy

Pierce's comedy comes from being badly out of step with everyone around him. He mangles youth culture, makes offensive comments without realizing they are offensive, and tries and fails to roast Jeff with the same wit Jeff aims at him. Troy even starts a Twitter account documenting the things Pierce says, which Pierce hates until he learns how many followers it has.

He belongs to an obscure religious group he describes as a form of Buddhism, and after his mother dies he carries around a lava lamp he believes holds her soul. The group often leaves him out, Pierce responds by acting out, and that cycle drives some of the show's sharpest conflicts.

Key storylines

Season two turns Pierce into something of a villain. He breaks both legs in a trampoline accident, gets hooked on painkillers, and schemes against his friends, and in the two-part paintball finale he learns the others secretly voted on whether to keep him in the group next year, with only Annie voting yes. He walks out at the end of "For a Few Paintballs More," then returns in season three, where his father's death and his ouster from Hawthorne Wipes lead him into a sandwich shop venture with Shirley.

Pierce graduates at the end of season four and appears in the season five premiere only as a prerecorded hologram. Shirley soon reveals that he has died, and in "Cooperative Polygraphy" the group must take lie detector tests under the terms of his will. He leaves each friend a parting gift, and he leaves Troy his company shares on the condition that Troy sail around the world.

Behind the scenes and legacy

Dan Harmon had long been a fan of Chevy Chase, who was not keen on sitcoms until the quality of the script won him over. Harmon saw a lot of Chase in Pierce, though he had to steer Chase away from playing a smart aleck, since Pierce is usually the butt of the joke rather than the one telling it.

Off camera, tensions grew, and Chase left near the end of season four by mutual agreement with NBC after using a racial slur on set. Pierce misses two late season four episodes as a result, the show writes him out in season five, and Joel McHale confirmed in 2024 that Chase would not take part in the planned Community movie.

Pierce Hawthorne: frequently asked questions

All Community charactersEssential Community episodesCommunity triviaMore 2000s sitcom characters

All sitcom characters A to Z