Amy Schumer will be on Charlie Rose this Friday, and in a new preview clip, she addressed the controversial comments made by Inside Amy Schumer staff writer Kurt Metzger which have inflamed the comedy world over the past couple of days.
After an Upright Citizens Brigade comic was banned from the theater after being accused of multiple rapes, Metzger — who has a history of inflammatory online remarks — took to Twitter and Facebook to castigate those who vilify alleged rapists, leading some to label him a “rape apologist.” (He later clarified that he stood by the victims, but was “talking to the perennial social-media mob who, without knowing victim or accused, GLEEFULLY want to be part of social-mob justice.”)
Earlier, Schumer tweeted that she was “saddened and disappointed” by Metzger, but also that he is not technically a writer for her show, because the show is on hiatus and will not be on air “in the foreseeable future.” Sitting down with Rose, she expanded on her remarks.
“One of the reasons he’s such a great writer and such a great contributor to our television show is because his views are so different from those of mine and most of the other writers in the room,” she explained. Acknowledging that they often butt heads, Schumer says she has sought to cultivate diverse opinions within her writers room. “We don’t want it to just be one-sided … [head writer Jessi Klein] and I have such similar sensibilities that it’s good to have — it feels very positive to have someone in there saying, ‘Well, this is from the male perspective.’”
She went on:
Kurt’s my friend. I love him. I’m not on Facebook so I don’t read his crazy rants. Like, he just gets something from going after people, making them mad. That is not representative of me at all. And, you know, I’ve asked him, just, “Can you just stop because it comes back to me?” Because he writes for the show, it’s a bigger story because of our connection, and so whatever tangent he’s gone off on I have not agreed with, and it’s been really upsetting to me seeing someone that I care about hurt themselves like this. Right now, there’s no plans for the TV show to come back anytime in the near future. So nobody’s on my staff. There are no writers. I think people, you know, they want his head. They want to burn him at the stake.
“I would love to refocus the energy and the attention on the real problem,” added Schumer, who herself is a sexual-assault victim. “He baits people. He’s the problem, no question, but the focus is on him rather than on what the real main problem is.”