Bill Maher said it’s time to bring comedian and filmmaker Louis C.K. back to a screen near you following fallout from the 2017 revelations of years of sexual misconduct. Sitting with comedian Bill Burr on Sunday’s “Club Random,” Maher argued that C.K.’s behavior was “not the end of the world.”
“Isn’t it time everyone just went, ‘OK, it wasn’t a cool thing to do, but it’s been long enough and welcome back to the work,”” Maher said.
“They took $50 million from him. I mean, I think they have punished him,” Burr said. That’s when Maher went in to defend C.K. while also criticizing how people overshoot their punishments for those who’ve victimized others with sexual misbehavior and misconduct.
“Enough. Enough! Not every, I mean, for Christ’s sake, it’s not the end of the world. People have done so much more worse things and gotten less. There’s no rhyme or reason to the #MeToo-type punishments,” Maher said.
Burr then chimed in with an explanation of #MeToo’s impact today compared to the movement’s beginnings.
“Well, it’s like most things. It started off with something everyone could agree on and then quickly, it just spun out, Burr said. “I remember whenever that cancel culture got to the point when it was, ‘I don’t like some of the topics in your stand-up act,’ yeah, that’s when it got weird. That’s all over.”
“That’s so not true,” Maher replied. “Either one of us could get canceled in the next two minutes.”
“No, for what?” Burr questioned. “Well, if you’re not doing anything. It’s just like, you did this joke about this group of people, or that group of people, it’s, I don’t know. I feel like I’m going back two years of my life. I don’t even think about it anymore.”
Maher’s remarks were connected to C.K. admitting to sexually harassing a number of young female comics after a New York Times expose accused the performer of masturbating in front of them.
“These stories are true,” C.K. said in a statement at the time. “The power I had over these women is that they admired me. And I wielded that power irresponsibly.”
This isn’t the first time Maher has spoken out in support of entertainers who have been accused of sexual misbehavior. He recently referred to actors who refuse to work with Woody Allen a “bunch of p–sies.”
“I don’t think he committed that crime. There were two police investigations that exonerated him. I mean, what do you have to do in this country?” Maher said in April, who slighted actors who are skeptical of collaborating with Allen. “All these actors who won’t work with him anymore, some of them who made movies with him and regret doing that, what a bunch of p–sies.”
Listen to Maher’s full “Club Random” episode with Barr in the video above.