Louis C.K. Has No Problem With Crowd Work Comics

On the Bad Friends podcast, hosted by comedians Bobby Lee and Andrew Santino, the duo pressed their latest guest, Louis C.K., on his opinions about the current state of crowd work. 

“You're a big crowd work guy,” Santino joked. “You started crowd work clips.”

“Yeah, that was my innovation,” C.K. replied, deadpan. 

After a bit of back and forth, Lee asked: “Does that annoy you? Like these crowd work guys doing clips on TikTok?”

C.K. was far more magnanimous than expected. 

“I mean, they got what they got from it,” C.K. said. “It's fine. It works for them. Good for them. I don't care. I don't love it, as a stand up. I don't enjoy watching that. Also, when I see friends of mine do it, it's like you're killing it in the moment, but no one's going to remember it.And you're not building anything. But I have a different goal than them.”

C.K. continued, offering up far more on the topic that has divided the comedy world than either Santino or Lee probably anticipated. 

“They just want to run their numbers up and they want to get whatever,” C.K. continued. “And also a lot of people, it pleases them a lot. So if an audience, if someone's enjoying it, they're right. And the person who doesn't like it is just none of their business. If you don't like something, it's none of your business as long as somebody likes it. If nobody likes it forever, someone needs to talk to the—but you know what? If literally no one ever liked a comic ever doing anything, that'd be pretty fucking incredible.”

It was a much more open-minded take on the topic than anticipated, if not because in recent years the comedian has taken a far more reactionary approach in his comedy and even his public statements about other comedians. Maybe his relatively tame comments about crowd work comedians are the result of the very weird year he’s had. 

On the upside, he’s been selling out shows on his tour and making lots of money by performing for the Saudi royal family at the Riyadh Comedy Festival. Dana Carvey considers the man our “greatest stand-up.” He’s even got a new novel, Ingram, on sale now. On the downside, a lot of people are very angry at C.K. for his decision to perform in Riyadh. Plus, early reviews of Ingram are not good. 

The generosity C.K.extends to crowd work comedians might be related to the amount of grace he’s been given. He made a successful return to working as a top comic after the #MeToo era revelations about his nonconsensual masturbation in front of female employees and collaborators. Then, after he started touring across the country and building a fan base back, he alienated some of them by agreeing to perform in Riyadh.