Sarah Silverman says Louis CK would ask to masturbate in front of her when they were younger
In an appearance on Howard Stern’s SiriusXM radio show today (via IndieWire), Sarah Silverman tried to make a point about why her longtime friend Louis CK might not have initially realized that his creepy, abusive behavior was both creepy and abusive. She says the two of them used to enjoy “letting our freak flags fly” when they were young, up-and-coming comedians, and they’d occasionally do crazy stuff like throwing their clothes out a window and then running down to the street naked to pick them up. Most notably, though, Silverman says CK would sometimes ask if he could masturbate in front of her, which happens to be the same thing he was accused of doing to other comedians and female employees in a New York Times Story—though CK didn’t ask these other women if it was okay with them beforehand.
“I know I’m going to regret saying this,” Silverman told Stern, “I’ve known Louis forever, I’m not making excuses for him, so please don’t take this that way.” She says the two of them were “peers” and “equals” and that she really just thought it would be weird or “gross” thing to experience as a laugh, which she admits is “not analogous to the other women that are talking about what he did to them” because he had no power of her. It wasn’t the same “dynamic” as when CK was a boss or an established comedian exposing himself to these other women who didn’t already have this relationship with him.
As predicted, Silverman did promptly regret her saying what she had said after comedian Rebecca Corry—one of the women who accused CK of sexual harassment—called her out on Twitter. She said that she was also CK’s “equal” when he sexually harassed her, adding that he “took away a day I worked years for and still has no remorse.”
Silverman apologized and Corry sort of accepted it, but it’s clear from her response that she’s not remotely interested in letting CK (or people who excuse his behavior) off the hook: