Marc Maron on Louis C.K.: 'I'm disappointed in my friend'

Comedian Marc Maron spend the first 20 minutes of his latest podcast episode talking about Louis C.K. and the troubling gender dynamics of Hollywood and comedy.

On Thursday. C.K. was accused of sexual misconduct by five women in a New York Times article; he issued a statement confirming the women's accounts the next day, at the same time in which he was also dropped by multiple production companies who have worked with him.

On Monday's episode of WTF with Marc Maron, Maron addressed the now-confirmed stories about his friend.

Maron usually opens WTF with a monologue before interviewing his guest, and he jumped right in.

"He's my friend, and it's a difficult position to be in," Maron said. "I certainly can't condone anything he did. There's no way to justify it, there's no way to defend it, there's no way to apologize for him about it, there's no way to let him off the hook."

"Sadly I knew what most people knew," Maron continued. "There was a story out there, I guess going back several years – there were unnamed people in the story, took place in a hotel room in Aspen. It was always out there but then it would pick up momentum at different times. and then I would ask him about it."

"When it comes to believing women, I want to believe women, but in this particular instance there were no one named in that story," Maron said of the original rumors about Aspen, where C.K. masturbated in front of two female comics in a hotel room. "I didn't know their names until Friday, so I believed my friend."

C.K. told Maron that the rumors were not true. When Maron asked if his friend was going to handle or address anything, C.K. refused on the grounds that acknowledging the rumors would give them life.

Maron knows Rebecca Corry, one of the women who accused C.K. in the Times, and lamented the fact that women – especially female comics – did not have a safe space to tell these stories up until now. They key to changing power dynamics and toxic environments, Maron said, is empathy, and empathy requires vigilance.

"It's hard to understand that that power dynamic is real and it exists because things have been the way they've been for a long time," he said.

Maron turned to introspection and calling out his own mistakes and history with toxic masculinity and the comedy scene, including past relationships and not employing female writers on his show. He also shared a personal story of a professor who kissed him without consent, a moment which made Maron freeze up and subsequently ignore.

"I am not trying to compare myself to women," Maron said. "I am trying to access the empathy and the understanding of this implicit and malignant age-old power dynamic so I can grow and help change things. This is a massive, turbulent learning moment for men – if you choose to take the education."