On Sunday night, Louis C.K. performed a stand-up set at New York’s famed Comedy Cellar. The performance came nine months after the comic admitted to sexually harassing multiple women by masturbating in front of them, and subsequently lying about his guilt before eventually issuing a kind of mea culpa last November. Today, Comedy Cellar owner Noam Dworman told The Hollywood Reporter he had no advance notice about C.K.’s appearance — which, according to the club owner, was actually C.K.’s second stand-up routine after one he did at Governor’s of Levittown in Long Island, despite the Cellar being billed as C.K.’s first public appearance — and that he was even asleep at home when the comic took the stage. “He just went and told the emcee that he wanted to go on, and it’s pretty much autopilot at that point — the emcee let him go on,†says Dworman. “It’s not an open mike, but it’s Louis C.K.â€
Dworman, who only heard audio of the performance after it happened, confirmed that the comic received a hearty ovation, and said he has only received one complaint from a patron who “felt really upset by it and said he felt ambushed.†Several positive pieces of feedback have also come to Dworman about the set, and the club owner did express hesitation about blocking comics from taking the stage, but he did add that, “the ambush thing is a problem … in the future I have to find a way where nobody who doesn’t want to be there feels like a captive audience.â€
On the content of the set, Dworman says it was “just the most plain everyday Louis C.K. stuff,†and that he wished the comic (who is not an accused sexual harasser, as Dworman calls him, but an admitted one) would have addressed his misconduct head-on. “What he didn’t do is that he didn’t go on and address the issue — he just went on and did a regular set,†the club owner told THR. “And I think that was a missed opportunity for him. I think that for a man who signed off from the public with this promise to, ‘I’ve talked for a long time, now I’m going to listen,’ he created the expectation of, Well now you’re back after nine months, what did you learn?â€