One day before his new Netflix show is set to premiere, Norm MacDonald went on “The View” Thursday to once again attempt to pull his foot out of his mouth over comments he made earlier this week about the #MeToo movement.
“What I was talking about was Chris Hardwick, a particular comedian, a friend of mine,” Macdonald said Thursday. “And if 500 women go against a man obviously the guy is guilty. In Chris Hardwick’s case, it’s one woman against one man. So I was saying I thought it was good that the pendulum was slowing. Chris Hardwick is as rehabilitated as you can get. Yet he still tells me he can’t walk down the street without people yelling stuff at him.”
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter earlier this week, Macdonald suggested that he was “glad” the #MeToo movement was slowing down, adding there should be a path to redemption for disgraced stars like Louis C.K. or Roseanne Barr: “The model used to be: admit wrongdoing, show complete contrition and then we give you a second chance. Now it’s admit wrongdoing and you’re finished.”
He continued, “There are very few people that have gone through what they have, losing everything in a day. Of course, people will go, ‘What about the victims?’ But you know what? The victims didn’t have to go through that.” The comments were met with intense backlash on social media, leading to Macdonald’s appearance on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” being canceled just moments before it was scheduled to begin.
But on Thursday, Macdonald further clarified by what he meant, specifically the suggestion that what Louis C.K. went through was comparable to the victims. “That’s not what I was saying,” he said.
He clarified by saying that when he spoke with Barr on the phone after ABC canceled her show, “she was crying the whole time I was talking to her. She seemed really, really in a bad place.” He suggested that she call Louis C.K. because he went through something similar — having his career in jeopardy due to his own bad behavior. “Not many of us have gone through this,” Macdonald said.
And that’s where things got tricky, said MacDonald. “And then the guy [referring to the THR reporter] said, ‘What about the victims?’ Well, the victims haven’t gone through this. I was talking about this particular event. Of course, the victims have gone through worse than that. I’m going to get a victim to phone Roseanne?”
Macdonald had initially tried to explain his comments to THR on Wednesday morning on Howard Stern’s SiriusXM show. Macdonald, who’s promoting his upcoming Netflix talk show, explained that he wasn’t trying to defend the accused men when he said that he’s “happy the #MeToo movement has slowed down a little bit.”
“I never defended them. I am completely behind the #MeToo movement,” the “Saturday Night Live” alum told Stern on Wednesday. “You’d have to have Down Syndrome to not feel sorry for- of course, #MeToo is what you want for your daughters. And you want that to be the future world.”
Macdonald’s talk show, “Norm Macdonald Has a Show” is still slated to premiere on Friday on Netflix.