In addition to disliking people of color, non binary individuals, young people, and survivors of gun violence, Louis C.K. does not condone marijuana consumption, apparently.
In a New Year’s Eve standup set, Pete Davidson recalled a time when C.K. berated him for smoking weed and ratted him out in front of the producers of Saturday Night Live, including executive producer Lorne Michaels.
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The anecdote started as a joke about tattoos: “I got a Harry Potter tattoo,” Davidson began. “Then the next day Alan Rickman, the guy who played Snape, died, and I was like, oh, what a weird coincidence. Then I got a Willy Wonka tattoo. Next day, Gene Wilder dies. Now I’m like, alright, that’s a coincidence, that’s weird. So I’m thinking of getting a tattoo of Louis C.K., what do you guys think? That joke used to be about Aziz Ansari, but Aziz has been nice to me recently.”
Davidson told the audience that when C.K. hosted SNL, he “told all the producers in front of me that all this kid does is smoke weed and he’s gonna smoke his career away.” He added that C.K. also told Michaels, “that Pete smokes so much weed that it makes people uncomfortable.”
But Davidson pointed out that in terms of “making people uncomfortable,” C.K. is something of a hypocrite: “Then five years later this mother—ker’s been locking doors and jerking off in front of people,” Davidson quipped, referencing the allegations that C.K. sexually harassed five women by masturbating in front of them.
The disgraced comedian also made headlines over the weekend when audio from a December 16 stand up set surfaced on YouTube. The original video has been taken down, but the worst bits have been documented extensively, and many people are rightfully outraged.
Over the course of his performance, C.K. managed to attack the Parkland survivors (“You’re not interesting because you went to a high school where kids got shot. […] You didn’t get shot, you pushed some fat kid in the way, and now I gotta listen to you talking?”), people who identify as gender neutral (“They tell you what to call them. […] Oh, OK. You should address me as ‘there’ because I identify as a location. And the location is your mother’s cunt.”), and Asian men (“You know why Asian guys have small dicks. ’Cause they’re women.”).
As C.K.’s critics have pointed out, after he was accused of sexual misconduct in 2017, the comedian vowed to withdraw from the public eye. But less than ten months later, C.K. reappeared on the comedy circuit telling tasteless and offensive jokes that have fired up the internet. As C.K. told the crowd at his latest standup set, he apparently feels he has nothing to lose: “Fuck it, what are you going to take away, my birthday? My life is over, I don’t give a shit.”
Davidson’s New Year’s Eve set was notably his first since a now-deleted Instagram post on December 5 caused friends and fans to fear for his safety. The post read that Davidson didn’t “want to be on this earth anymore.”
In the December 31 set, Davidson also joked about his relationship with Ariana Grande—a romance that was hard to escape in 2018. He said her hit single “Thank U, Next” came out right before a taping of SNL, which was difficult for him, but that the song is ultimately not as critical as he’d feared. Davidson added, however, that his mother, a school nurse, has had to endure students taunting her with the song.
As to whether anyone at SNL actually has a problem with Davidson’s weed consumption, the jury is still out. VICE has reached out to SNL representatives with a request for comment, and we’ll update this post accordingly if it turns out C.K. isn’t just a narc.
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