Tig Notaro finds the upside to Louis CK allegations: "Victims were not told they're lying"
Vindication is bittersweet for Tig Notaro. That much was clear yesterday, when Notaro was asked about her former collaborator Louis CK’s sexual misconduct at Vulture Festival LA. Notaro publicly distanced herself from CK months before his public reckoning, calling for CK to “handle” what were then “rumors” about him back in August and including a scene in the second season of her show One Mississippi where a powerful man masturbates in front of a female employee that she’s since confirmed was about CK. After those “rumors” were put on the record in The New York Times, CK copped to his misconduct, but Notaro remained wry in response to an audience question about his response to the allegations.
“Did he respond?,” Notaro said, before adding: “I don’t want to go into the Louis stuff. The positive of that particular situation is whatever someone’s intentions are there—meaning him—the positive is that victims were not told they’re lying anymore. That was the positive that came from that, and that’s it as far as I’m concerned. That’s all I took from that.” She went on to say that she hopes the conversation continues around sexual harassment and assault: “I go back to that feeling of endless hope and optimism, but it can’t just be this little burst that happens and we move on from it,” she said.
As for Notaro, she appeared at Vulture Festival LA in conversation with her friend Michaela Watkins, who’s currently starring on Hulu’s Casual. The panel was to promote Notaro’s new talk show concept The Turning Point With Tig Notaro, in which “guests discuss the moment in their life when everything changed.”