Last August, Louis CK announced that he was taking a break from his critically acclaimed FX show Louie, with FX CEO John Landgraf later referring to the break as an “indefinite hiatus”—meaning that it might come back someday or it might not come back at all. The general impression was that Louis CK could bring the show back whenever he wants, but FX is cool with it if he chooses to remain on this hiatus forever. Now, speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, CK has offered more details on why he decided to take this hiatus, but it sounds like the odds of him returning to Louie aren’t very good.
CK starts off by saying that he never wants to make more of Louie simply because he’s required to, adding that something like that wouldn’t be “fair to anybody.” As for why he wanted to take this break, though, he basically says that he’s out of ideas. “The guy I played on that show, the just-divorced kinda underwater dad/struggling New York comic, I don’t think I have stories for that guy anymore,” he told THR. However, given the show’s semi-autobiographical nature, CK says that he and Landgraf have always thought that Louie “may come back with a different set of stories from a different angle a little further down the road.”
The interview also touched on Horace And Pete, CK’s post-hiatus project, which grabbed a few headlines in April when he said that making the show—which was directly distributed through his website—left him in massive debt, in addition to a report that the show was totally over. Apparently, though, neither of those things are totally true. For starters, he says he was mostly joking when he said the show put him in debt, because “every TV show that you ever see is running a deficit.” Also, Horace And Pete isn’t finished entirely, just its first season. CK isn’t sure if he’ll return to it for more episodes, but he still has the set in storage and—like Louie—he’s ready to return to it if he’s in the mood.