Marc Maron Says He Confronted Louis C.K. About Sexual Misconduct Rumors and Was Lied To About Them
Zack Sharf
During the latest episode of his “WTF” podcast, published November 13, Marc Maron takes some time to address Louis C.K.‘s sexual misconduct. The New York Times published a report on November 9 in which five women accused C.K. of asking to masturbate in front of them. Two of the women say C.K. actually went through with the act when they were in his hotel room in Aspen, Colorado. C.K. admitted the allegations were true in a statement made November 10, but Maron reveals C.K. once lied to him when confronted about the claims.
“Sadly, I knew what most people knew: There was a story out there, I guess going back several years, there were unnamed people in the story, it took place in a hotel room in Aspen. It was always out there, but then it would pick up momentum at different times,” Maron said on “WTF.” “I would ask him about it. I would say, ‘This story about you forcing these women to watch you jerk off, what is that, is that true?’ He goes, ‘No, it’s not true. It’s not real. It’s a rumor.’ And I would say, ‘Well, are you going to address it somehow? Handle it? Get out from under it whenever it shows up?’ ‘No I can’t, I can’t do that. I can’t give it life, give it air.’ That was the conversation.”
The Aspen incident involved Chicago comedy duo Dana Min Goodman and Julia Wolov and occurred when the two were invited to C.K.’s hotel room during the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival. “He proceeded to take all of his clothes off, and get completely naked, and started masturbating,” Goodman told The Times.
Maron says the rumors surrounding C.K.’s sexual misconduct were able to percolate for so long without any real consequences because the comedy scene does not have a place where woman can report harassment. “When it comes to believing women, I want to believe women, but in this particular instance, there was no one named in that [Louis C.K. blind item], there was no place for women to go tell this story, there were no women attached to it,” Maron said. “I didn’t know their names until Friday. So I believed my friend. It’s just that the environment enabled the dismissiveness of it.”
Maron continues: “The work environment, the social environment makes it difficult for people to come forward and be heard, to be listened to, to be believed, and for action to be taken around that. It is pushed aside, it is dismissed, it is framed as an annoyance or an embarrassment, it is used against people, it is used as a threat, that is the structure that exists in life.”
Click here to listen to the entirety of Maron’s latest “WTF” podcast.
