Tig Notaro: Louis C.K.’s Forced Departure from ‘One Mississippi’ Was ‘A Huge Relief’
While promoting “One Mississippi” during an appearance on “The View,” star and co-creator Tig Notaro reflected on losing Louis C.K. as a series executive producer last month, a consequence for the sexually harassing behavior he admitted to following a New York Times investigation quoting five accusers.
“It’s a huge relief,” Notaro told the hosts on December 11, explaining that she learned of C.K.’s alleged behavior soon after she sold the series with him attached. “I started publicly trying to distance myself from him almost two years [ago].”
On November 10, one day after the Times published their story — giving Notaro the last word — FX Networks and FX Productions cancelled its overall deal with C.K.’s production company, Pig Newton, Inc., meaning he would no longer oversee “Better Things,” “Baskets,” “One Mississippi,” and “The Cops,” a once-planned animated series he conceptualized with Albert Brooks. The deal was first announced in December 2013, between Seasons 3 and 4 of “Louie,” C.K.’s Emmy-winning FX dramedy.
“One Mississippi” was developed for FX but is distributed by Amazon Studios. Its second season premiered this September and included an episode where Tig’s radio producer and love interest, Kate (played by her wife, Stephanie Allyne) is forced to watch their station manager masturbate.
When asked whether that scene was directed at C.K., Notaro explained, “Every story on ‘One Mississippi’ is based in truth, and it’s not necessarily my truth, but it’s somebody’s truth. Something somebody experienced, or knew of the experience happening.” She and her staff of six female writers wanted to “recreate” harassment that they’d each experienced (Notaro said that from C.K. himself, she’d endured “nothing” like his accusers, who he showed his penis to without their consent).
“People seem to feel like this was hard to believe, that this sort of behavior would happen, because it’s like what is somebody’s motivation there?” asked Notaro, noting that the episode was written in January 2017, many months before allegations against Harvey Weinstein’s led to the shunning of powerful, rumor-laden men in various industries. “It’s not somebody interested in somebody, it’s not somebody flirting, it’s something beyond that. It’s power, it’s abuse, it’s disgusting.”
C.K. was once among Notaro’s personal champions, releasing “Live” — the Grammy-nominated live recording where she shocked an audience with news of her breast cancer diagnosis — on his website in October 2012 (Notaro had a double mastectomy and is now cancer-free). However, their strained relationship became public this spring after she accused him of stealing one of her video concepts for a “Saturday Night Live” sketch (and admitted that they weren’t speaking), then when she advised in an August 2017 interview that he “handle” allegations that he had acted inappropriately towards women.
Watch the full clip from “The View” below.
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