When the second season of Tig Notaro’s Amazon series One Mississippi premiered this past September, much attention was drawn to a scene in its fifth episode, “Can’t Fight This Feeling”: A powerful man (played by Timm Sharp) masturbates in front of a woman (played by Stephanie Allynne) whose career he’s just given a leg-up. The character’s actions mirrored accusations of sexual misconduct on the part of One Mississippi executive producer Louis CK, accusations that have since been put on record by five women in a New York Times exposé. That same article confirms that the “Can’t Fight This Feeling” scene and the storyline that follows it are “a fictional treatment of the alleged masturbation episodes.”
Notaro has made no secret of her strained professional relationship with CK: Voicing her disappointment with the similarities between her short film “Clown Service” and the CK-starring SNL sketch “Birthday Clown,” she told Entertainment Weekly that she’d had no contact with her fellow comedian in “nearly a year and a half.” CK receives an EP credit on One Mississippi, and it’s produced through his Pig Newton shingle, but he’s never had any direct involvement with the show. Even so, Notaro tells the Times that she feels “trapped” by their association, and voices concern that he released her album Live on his website as a shield for his bad behavior. “Her fear is that ‘he released my album to cover his tracks,’ the article says. “He knew it was going to make him look like a good guy, supporting a woman.”