The News

Callen

“As soon as she saw his name, Katherine Fiore Tigerman broke out in a cold sweat. Her shirt damp, she scrolled through the text messages from her best friend alerting her that comedian Chris D’Elia was being accused of sexual misconduct by scores of women on Twitter. She’d never watched the comic’s stand-up. She just knew he was the best friend of Bryan Callen, a fellow comedian and actor. And Callen, she’d long told those closest to her, had once raped her. Lightheaded, she logged on to Twitter to scan the allegations. She found that many of the tweets referred not just to D’Elia’s supposed misconduct but to that of his tight circle of male comedians. “My first thought was: ‘Is something going to happen with Bryan?’” Tigerman recalled. “Reading all the comments, I thought: Here it comes. I’ve known how terrible this person is for 20 years. And maybe I’m not the only one.” In a statement to The Times, Callen adamantly denied raping Tigerman and said their encounter was consensual. Since June 17 — the day D’Elia started trending on social media — three additional women told The Times that they had been mistreated by Callen, 53, describing sexual incidents ranging from assault to misconduct to disturbing comments… Callen often played up his reputation as a self-proclaimed “dirtbag.” In a 2016 episode of his podcast featuring comedian Whitney Cummings as a guest, Callen joked about how he’d been sexually harassing her since early in her career. Cummings then revealed that Callen had once asked for a ride home after a comedy show and pulled his penis out in her car. He said he didn’t remember the incident but believed her version of events. “My definition on ‘creepy’ is that if I’m into you, you’re gonna know it, front and center,” he said. “It’s when guys kind of pull this gentleman thing and he’s being a really nice guy and then you look and he’s got his dick out. You’re a serial killer. Be honest about your creepy. Which, of course, I’ve always been.”

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