Jerry Seinfeld on Louis C.K., Roseanne and Tense Times in Comedy

You don’t think he should stay away from the stage right now?
I can’t say what he should do. You do whatever you want. If he does it wrong, he’s going to suffer. And that’s his deal.

So you don’t have any objection to his coming back?
If there’s a crime here, and the law gets involved, that’s what the law is for. The laws of comedy, we kind of make them up as we go. Part of entertainment, sometimes, is the life of the person. We want that to entertain us, too, as part of the act. We like your show, and then we like your messed-up life. That entertains us as well. When you saw Richard Pryor, it was more than just the act. You’re in the room with this guy who lived this crazy life. Somebody said it’s the first time that someone has misbehaved where all people ask about is, “How’s the perpetrator? How’s he doing?” They don’t ask, “How’s the victim?” Didn’t Sarah Silverman say the other day that she was doing this stuff with him?

In her case, it was consensual.
[Deeply sarcastic] That’s fantastic.

Before the revelations of his crimes, was Bill Cosby someone you had admired?
I totally did. But when that happens, that’s too big a safe falling out of a window to ignore. The crash is too loud. The thing I think that’s new for people — let’s take Roseanne and Cosby — is the suddenness and the precipitous fall. So much work, gone so fast. We’re upset at the speed of it, because it’s new. I would say about Roseanne, I never saw anything that bad happen from a finger-tap on a screen. A whole career: gone. That’s an aspect of this unease we feel, that you just wake up — “Oh, by the way, the Lincoln Memorial’s gone.” “What?” “Yeah, they took it down. They found out Lincoln was fooling around and they took it down.” “Oh, my God. All right, I guess I have to adjust to that. I really liked the Lincoln Memorial.”

There were previous, less noticed instances of her offensive behavior on social media. Did her firing seem sudden to you?
Of course it did. Not unjustified, but that is just how it played. They just went: You’re done. That is a new kind of moment. Usually, there’s a crumbling, a crack — someone tries to get in there with some Spackle. Maybe we can rebar this, maybe we can scaffold it. That’s what’s more typical.

In the case of Cosby, have you had to reassess why you idolized him in the first place?
Obviously I didn’t know anything [about his crimes]. Do I rethink idolatry? No, I will not give up on having heroes. I know you can get hurt, but I am a hopeful person. I like to believe in people. I said to Ellen DeGeneres, humans — we have an abusive relationship with each other. We hate other people. We despise them. And then we see somebody play a beautiful piano concerto and we go, “Oh, people are the best.” They get us right back for more abuse.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/26/arts/television/jerry-seinfeld-interview.html?partner=rss&emc=rss