A few months ago we got an email from a tipster who said he was awaiting a phone call from Louis C.K., who will host the final episode of Saturday Night Live’s 40th season this weekend. The subject of their phone call was sexual misconduct allegations made by the tipster’s friend against the comedian.

Our tipster, who works a 9-to-5 job but does comedy at night, had sent an email to C.K. at the address louisck@louisck.com.* The tipster—we’ll call him Jason—says he had received fan club correspondence from that email, and he had used it when he was a teenager to send C.K. fan mail. (A rep for C.K. would neither confirm nor deny that C.K. uses that email.)

In his first email, Jason plainly lays out his grievances against the comedian, signing it “a former fan.” (In the following screenshots, provided to us by our tipster, we have redacted his name, email address and phone number):

According to Jason, C.K. replied with the following, and then sent another email to correct a typo:

Then, per Jason, the two arranged the phone meeting (the following thread shows the response emails coming from “louisck@louisck.com”):

I talked to Jason after this phone call with C.K. He characterized their conversation as stilted and non-substantive. His interpretation was that C.K. was “sizing me up” to “find out what I had heard.” Jason left the conversation under the impression that the two would speak again soon. In the four or so months since, they haven’t.

I had asked Jason about the events that motivated him to email C.K. out of the blue in the first place. He was reluctant to go into much detail, but he said that two women he knew had been mistreated by him. He described one of the alleged incidents, which he said had happened sometime in the second half of 2014: A female friend of his told him that C.K. had come up to her at a comedy club, grabbed her by the back of the neck, leaned into her ear, and said “I’m going to fuck you.”

This was not the first allegation of sexual misconduct levied against C.K. In March of 2012, we ran a blind item titled “Which Beloved Comedian Likes to Force Female Comics to Watch Him Jerk Off?,” which described an incident that had supposedly taken place in Aspen a few years prior involving “our nation’s most hilarious stand-up comic and critically cherished sitcom auteur” and two unnamed female comedians:

At the Aspen Comedy Festival a few years ago, he invited a female comedy duo back to his hotel room. The two ladies gladly joined him, and offered him some weed. He turned it down, but asked if it would be OK if he took his dick out. Thinking he was joking (that’s exactly the kind of thing this guy would say), the women gave a facetious thumbs up. He wasn’t joking. When he actually started jerking off in front of them, the ladies decided that wasn’t their bag and made for the exit. But the comedian stood in front of the door, blocking their way with his body, until he was done.

The item, which we couldn’t pin down at the time, was, as several commenters noted, a now well-circulated rumor about C.K.—although, in a confusing development, the comedian Doug Stanhope, a friend of Louis C.K., took to Facebook and claimed to be the culprit. (Several of Stanhope’s Facebook commenters replied that they thought it was about C.K.)

One of the commenters on our post affirmed that the whispers of C.K. taking his dick out whenever he pleases are well-known within the comedy world:

I have it on good authority (friends in the biz) that it’s Louis CK. I’ve heard stories about his propensity for whipping it out and jerking off in front of women at inappropriate times (i.e. dinner table, bar, etc.).

Another source relayed a story about a similar incident, at an afterparty at the Just For Laughs comedy festival in Montreal several years ago. The comedian allegedly took two women up to his room, but at some point they barged out, claiming he had started masturbating in front of them without warning.

Jason had heard the Aspen rumors, and said he reached out to us because he thought up-and-coming female comics should know “the reputation” of perhaps the most powerful stand-up comedian in the world.



We had no means of verifying Jason’s claims directly. He said the women he knew had told him they wouldn’t come forward, citing C.K.’s reputation and power in the comedy world. The two members of the comedy duo who were supposedly subjected to the Aspen jerk-off incident wanted nothing to do with the story then, and did not respond for comment when contacted before the publication of this post.

We’ve reached out to C.K.’s rep about these allegations and are awaiting word back.

Have you been sexually harassed by Louis C.K., or do you know someone who has? Have you heard rumors of the sort? If so, please leave a comment below or contact me at jordan@gawker.com, anonymity guaranteed.

