Admitted sexual harasser Louis C.K. has been officially welcomed back into the mainstream spotlight.
Netflix announced on Thursday that the disgraced comedian will headline the Hollywood Bowl on May 5 for the streamer’s “Netflix Is A Joke” festival. The streamer will also release his first stand-up special to premiere on a major streamer since before he was “canceled,” Ridiculous, over the summer.
C.K. was accused of sexual misconduct by several women at the height of the #MeToo movement in 2017. He told CBS in a statement that year that the accusations “were true.” Among them were five different women’s claims that he masturbated in front of them without their consent.
Though C.K. has avoided the spotlight over the years, during which, as he promised in his statement to CBS, he would “step back and take a long time to listen,” he’s attempted several comebacks.
In 2022, he won a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album for his self-released standup special, Sincerely, Louis C.K. His upcoming Netflix special will be his first on a major platform since his last special with that same streamer in 2017, which was released before the accusations emerged.
Last year, he put out a novel, Ingram, about a character whose story arc centers on masturbation. While discussing the book with Bill Maher in October, Maher jokingly asked C.K. about the plot point, “Where do you get your ideas?”
Laughed C.K., “Like you said, write what you know.”
In 2024, Sorry, Not Sorry, a documentary chronicling his accusers’ stories about their encounters with him, was released in theaters.
The film’s co-director, Caroline Suh, told The Daily Beast, “While Louis C.K. certainly lost a lot in the process, he still has a lot of fans who don’t really know or care about what happened.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to Netflix for comment.
