Amy Schumer says she wishes people on social media would not “attach” her to the words of Kurt Metzger.
Metzger came under fire this week for a series of criticized Facebook and Twitter posts that seemed to scold women who don’t go to the police after alleged sexual assaults. The comedian was a writer on the most recent season of Inside Amy Schumer.
“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 that of mine and most of the other writers in the room,” Schumer explained in an interview with Charlie Rose. “Especially Jessi Klein, who’s the head writer of the show. We butt heads, we get in fights, because he infuriates us.”
Schumer said Metzger’s place in the show’s writers’ room helped Inside Amy Schumer stay away from being “just one-sided.”
“It feels very positive to have someone in there saying this is from the male perspective,” she said, adding, Metzger “is the most out-there male perspective possible.”
Schumer called Metzger her “friend,” but explained she didn’t read his Facebook rants. “That is not representative of me at all,” she said of those who connected Metzger to Schumer. “I’ve asked him, ‘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. Whatever tangent he’s gone off on, I have not agreed, and it’s been really upsetting to me seeing someone that I care about hurt themselves like this.”
In tweets posted late Wednesday, Schumer said Metzger did not work for her show because “we aren’t making the show anymore. There are no writers for it.” The tweet led to speculation Inside Amy Schumer was ending despite being renewed for a fifth season by Comedy Central. The actress clarified on Thursday that while Inside Amy Schumer won’t return in the “foreseeable future,” it would come back eventually.
“Right now there are no plans for the TV show to come back in the near future, so nobody is on my staff,” she explained to Rose. “There are no writers. People, they want his head; they want to burn him at the stake. I want them to not attach me to what he’s writing.”
Schumer added that the discussion around Metzger also took focus away from “the real problem, which is people understanding about rape. What’s consensual and what’s not.” She added, “Let’s focus on actually getting the problem done. I was sexually assaulted. I have encouraged women to come out… I want men to hear what happened so that there’s no confusion, because people have different understandings of what sexual assault is, what rape is. Let’s all get on the same page so that it happens less.”
See the clip above. Schumer’s full interview runs Friday on PBS.
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