The premiere of 'I Love You, Daddy' - the new film directed by and starring comedian and actor Louis C.K. - was cancelled in New York last night after The New York Times published an expose about his alleged sexual misconduct toward a number of women.
It's believed that the distributor, The Orchard, had heard that the NYT was about to run the piece and cited 'unexpected circumstances' for the cancellation.
The article details the experiences of five women who have come forward, with the first stretching back as far as 2002, when Chicago comedy duo Dana Min Goodman and Julia Wolov were invited to the comedian's hotel room at a comedy festival in Colorado. They say that he removed his clothing and started to masturbate in front of them.
Another woman, Abby Schnacher, says that C.K. called her to invite her to one of his shows in 2003, and "during the phone conversation, she said, she could hear him masturbating as they spoke."
The fourth woman - comedian and actress Rebecca Corry - was filming a television pilot with C.K. in 2005 when he asked if he could go to her dressing room and "masturbate in front of her." When she declined, pointing out that he had a child and a pregnant wife, she said “His face got red, and he told me he had issues.” Her story was corroborated by Courteney Cox, who was executive producing the pilot, and who told the NYT “What happened to Rebecca on that set was awful."
An anonymous fifth woman says that the incident with C.K. occured when he was a writer/producer on 'The Chris Rock Show' in the late 1990s and she was working in production on the show. She says that C.K. "repeatedly asked her to watch him masturbate" and regularly did so in his office during the workday, with colleagues just outside the door.
In 2011, Gawker first published allegations about C.K. without naming him, then followed it up with this piece in 2015. Many reaction pieces to the NYT article have commented on how often C.K. jokes about masturbation during his stand-up routine, perhaps in an effort to 'normalise' it.
He has yet to make a public statement addressing the claims, but has been cut from several planned TV appearances - including yesterday's 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert' and an upcoming HBO comedy special.
