Pamela Adlon says Louis CK sexual misconduct scandal made it feel 'like the world was ending'

Adlon addressed the scandal while promoting the new season of Better Things

Pamela Adlon has addressed the sexual misconduct allegations about her former creative partner Louis CK and revealed that she was aware of rumours surrounding the disgraced comedian's behaviour.

CK was accused last year of masturbating in front of several female comics and writers, which he later admitted to.

Speaking with The New Yorker, Adlon, who has frequently collaborated with CK over the years including as a co-star on his HBO series Lucky Louie, stated: “I was aware. There’s certain things— Do I lay everything bare? I don’t know how to respond. All you can do is, when you know somebody you confront them.”

Adlon addressed the scandal while she was promoting the third season of her critically acclaimed series Better Things. In a previous statement released shortly after the allegations emerged, she said she was “devastated and in shock after the admission of abhorrent behaviour by my friend and partner”. She severed professional ties with both the comedian and their joint manager Dave Becky, later hiring four new writers for Better Things.

“I wanted the world to calm down,” Adlon said in the interview. “I wanted a conversation to happen. I don’t think there’s anything that can compare with a massive public shaming like that.”

Asked whether she and CK are still speaking, she responded: “No, I’m not. But I hate saying that. If I said, ‘Oh, yeah, I talk to him every day,’ or ‘No, I’m not,’ both are awful. But I haven’t spoken to him in quite a long time.”

CK was recently condemned for joking about the survivors of the Parkland shooting, where he mocked them for turning to activism for better gun control.

“When I was like, 18 to my twenties, we were idiots,” he said in leaked audio from the set at the Comedy Cellar in New York. “We [were] out getting high, doing mushrooms and s**t.”

He added: “They're just boring. Telling you, 'you shouldn't say that...' what are you, an old lady?... F**k you, you're a child. They're like royalty, they tell you what to call them. 'You should address me as they/them because I identify as gender neutral.' OK, you should address me as 'there' because I identify as a location, and the location is your mother'r c***.”

“You're not interesting because you went to a high school where kids got shot,” he said of the Parkland children. “Why does that mean I have to listen to you? Why does that make you interesting? You didn't get shot, you pushed some fat kid in the way, and now I gotta listen to you talking?”

In response, one of the father's of a Parkland shooting victim shared a grim “stand up” routine where he feigned jokes about “kids getting shot” and “dead babies”.

“You heard the one about the kid that walks into the school on Valentine's Day?” Manuel Oliver, father of shooting victim Joaquin Oliver, said in the video. “Skinny kid, wearing headphones, gets dropped by his dad. And he says, 'I love you' and gets out of the car and walks into the school. And then gets shot to death a couple of hours later.”

The video closed with text calling on viewers to “stand up to gun violence” followed by the hashtag #NotAJoke.