Jerry Seinfeld loves Hannah Gadsby's Nanette, thinks Louis CK could make a comeback but chose the wrong way, and reflects on Roseanne Barr and Bill Cosby

The New York Times

Seinfeld spoke at length to The New York Times, again weighing in on the fall of his friend Louis CK. Asked if it was too soon for CK to be performing again, Seinfeld said: "It’s the way he did it that I think people didn’t like. Some people didn’t like that he’s doing it at all. We know the routine: The person does something wrong. The person’s humiliated. They’re exiled. They suffer, we want them to suffer. We love the tumble, we love the crash and bang of the fall. And then we love the crawl-back. The grovel. Are you going to grovel? How long are you going to grovel? Are you going to cry? Are you going to Jimmy Swaggart? And people, I think, figured they had that coming with Louie — he owes us that. We, the court of public opinion, decided if he’s going to come back, he’d better show a lot of pain. Because he denied them that." He also was asked about Gadsby's critically acclaimed Nanette, and how it's polarized the comedy community. "Loved it," he said. "She did a beautiful job, and the way she braided it with the art history she studied in school, that made it fascinating and fantastic." He added that Gadsby "stretched the form of standup" and that her special "is why people are excited about standup now." As for the fall of Cosby, whom he admired, Seinfeld said: "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."