Roseanne Barr said she’s heard many stories confirming earlier allegations about Louis C.K. allegedly sexually harassing female comics, according to a recent interview with The Daily Beast promoting her new documentary, Roseanne For President!
“It’s not just Bill Cosby,” she said. “Some of the biggest comics, males, are doing some terrible things. And they’re about to get busted.”
The accusations seem to stem from a now-deleted episode of Jen Kirkman’s podcast (but it can be found here), “I Seem Fun,” where she talked about a “Cosby level” “famous comic” and a “known perv” who “didn’t rape me, but he made a certain difficult decision to go on tour with him really hard.” Some weeks later, a Defamer article revealed “well-circulated” rumors about how C.K. would supposedly take his penis out and/or begin masturbating in front of frightened and uninterested women.
“I’ve been speaking up,” Barr continyed. “It’s Louis C.K., locking the door and masturbating in front of women comics and writers. I can’t tell you — I’ve heard so many stories. Not just him, but a lot of them. And it’s just par for the course. It’s just shit women have to put up with.” She went on to detail the sexism that she and all female stand-up comics have had to deal with, from “grotesque sexism” to what she sees as the same level of unequal treatment, now “latent misogyny.” From making extremely gendered jokes about women onstage, to dealing with gross men, she said she’s seen and heard about it all, with stories like Cosby’s having been well-known around comedy circles.“I know several women who went through that with Bill [Cosby],” Barr said, adding that these alleged Cosby victims are not among the nearly 60 women who have already come forward to accuse the comedian of sexual assaults dating back to 1965. “Yeah. I know them,” she said. “No, they didn’t ever come forward. I understand why they don’t. But I’ve known for a long, long time. Everyone knows.”
In a recent interview with New York Magazine, C.K. said about the allegations “I don’t care about that. That’s nothing to me. That’s not real.”
C.K. has not commented on the Daily Beast story yet.