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Comedian Louis C.K. has been accused of sexual misconduct by at least five women, some of whom told the New York Times in an explosive interview published Thursday that C.K. masturbated in front of them without their consent.
In the first of several allegations against the Louie star, comedians Dana Min Goodman and Julia Wolov told the newspaper that C.K. allegedly invited them back to his hotel room following their appearance at a comedy festival in Colorado in 2002.
The Times reported:
As soon as they sat down in his room, still wrapped in their winter jackets and hats, Louis C.K. asked if he could take out his penis, the women said.
They thought it was a joke and laughed it off. “And then he really did it,” Ms. Goodman said in an interview with The New York Times. “He proceeded to take all of his clothes off, and get completely naked, and started masturbating.”
Meanwhile, another comedian, Rebecca Cory, alleged that C.K. asked her if he could masturbate in front of her while the pair were appearing in a TV pilot together in 2005. And yet another woman charged that she could hear the comedian masturbating while she spoke on the phone with him during an alleged incident in 2003.
Another woman, who chose to remain anonymous, alleged that C.K. had repeatedly asked to masturbate in front of her while both of them were working on The Chris Rock Show in the late 1990s.
In a statement to the Times, C.K.’s publicist Lewis Kay said the comedian would not answer any questions about the allegations.
The on-the-record interviews with the Times come as the New York City premiere of C.K.’s latest film was canceled Thursday afternoon, along with a scheduled appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. C.K.’s latest film, which has stirred controversy for its inclusion of jokes about child rape and star C.K.’s use of the N-word, had been scheduled to premiere Thursday night at Manhattan’s Paris Theatre.
In her interview with the Times, Corry said that C.K. approached her as she was walking near the set of the television pilot they were shooting. When C.K. allegedly asked her to watch him masturbate, Corry reportedly went to the pilot’s executive producers, Courteney Cox and David Arquette, to tell them about the incident. Cox confirmed she knew about the incident in an email to the paper.
“My concern was to create an environment where Rebecca felt safe, protected and heard,” Cox said.
Corry also said that she received an email from C.K. in 2015, years after the alleged incident, in which the comedian offered a “very very very late apology” for his behavior. But Corry said that C.K. apologized for shoving her in a bathroom, not allegedly masturbating in front of her, causing her to think there have been other incident of misconduct.
The Times story comes four weeks after the paper published an exposé on movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, detailing decades of allegations of sexual harassment and assault from multiple women. Weinstein was fired from his position at The Weinstein Company and expelled from several major Hollywood organizations, including the film Academy and the Producers Guild of America. Weinstein could also soon face criminal charges, after multiple women accused him of rape in the weeks since the Times story first broke.
Louis C.K. has won multiple Emmy Awards for his work on the FX comedy series Louie. A representative for the comedian did not immediately return a request for comment.
Read the full New York Times report here.
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum
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