Over the past few days, Amy Schumer has been the target of the latest joke theft allegations making the rounds on the internet after comedians Wendy Liebman, Kathleen Madigan, and Tammy Pescatelli posted tweets implying that Schumer had stolen their material for her standup act, Inside Amy Schumer, and Trainwreck. The tweets have since been deleted (you can read them here), but the material in question – including a Patrice O’Neal bit some accused Schumer of using in her Live at the Apollo special – has since been compiled in a video online:
Not one to take the allegations lightly, Schumer sat down with Jim Norton on his Sirius XM show yesterday to respond, and she even pledged to take a polygraph test and air the unedited, unfiltered results on the next season of Inside Amy Schumer. While she’s a fan of the comics, Schumer claims she’d never seen the material in question prior to writing it herself, and she’s always careful when choosing her material: “You know me – I’m so like, ‘Is this anyone’s bit?’ I have to come up with so much material for my TV show, this movie, standup – and I’m so careful. And none of these things had ever reached me. And I will literally take a polygraph. And I would just never do that – that would be so stupid for me to do that. So I wanted to come here and talk to you about it.†Listen to Schumer’s full chat with Norton below:
Schumer’s friends and collaborators have also come to her defense on Twitter, including Inside Amy Schumer co-creator/executive producer Daniel Powell:
Inside Amy Schumer head writer Jessi Klein:
Aziz Ansari:
Colin Quinn:
And here’s the response from Mark Normand, who has toured with Schumer for years:
Parallel thinking happens all the time in comedy, and as Schumer pointed out to Norton, there’s so much more at stake when a comedian is in the spotlight and enjoying the mainstream success that comes with a hit TV show, standup special, and movie. Whether or not you think Schumer would be careless enough to rip off a few standup bits after rising to fame through her own material and hard work, though, one thing’s for sure: That polygraph segment on next season of Inside Amy Schumer should be super interesting.