Drop the candles and step away from the fandom altar, because despite some success with Amy Poehler and Tina Fey and Mindy Kaling and B.J. Novak, your comedy friendship dark arts have gone awry. That’s right: Amy Schumer and Tig Notaro, two funny people who seemed to like being funny together, are not actually friends. Notaro herself unmasked show business’s shady tricks in an interesting interview with the Guardian, when Notaro was asked by the interviewer about a Vanity Fair article in which Schumer, quoted as a “close friend,†said: “Looking masculine and being gay, the challenges of the road are 20 times harder for Tig than other female comedians. People fear what they don’t understand.†Notaro, not amused with Schumer’s statement, responded with: “I don’t know what she was talking about. It sounds like offensive nonsense to me. I find that so offensive and weird … If you knew me well, you would never say that.â€
Now, that’s a bit surprising, because Schumer has spoken plenty of times about hiring Notaro to write on Inside Amy Schumer during Notaro’s breast cancer battle, even sharing a bunk bed-decked apartment with Notaro and fellow comedian Kyle Dunnigan, so Schumer seems to at least think she knows Notaro well. Indeed, Inside Amy Schumer even featured a sketch about Notaro’s cancer that targeted the kind of bad friends who coasted on Notaro’s illness. So surely Schumer herself must be exempt from that category, and surely Schumer and Notaro have the great friendship Schumer depicts, right? … Right? Per Notaro: “Ummm … I’ve worked with her. I worked with her for the first season [of Inside Amy Schumer].†Okay, so now that everything we thought we knew is but a mirage of wish fulfillment and publicity savvy, what’s the truth? “Let’s leave it there,†Notaro ends.