{"id":771505,"date":"2026-06-30T17:32:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T17:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/771505\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T17:32:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T17:32:09","slug":"at-mark-twain-prize-louis-c-k-recalls-bill-mahers-friendship-after-becoming-an-outcast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/771505\/","title":{"rendered":"At Mark Twain Prize, Louis C.K. recalls Bill Maher’s friendship after becoming an “outcast”"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is no doubt that Louis C.K. is back. He has a new Netflix special<\/a> arriving on the streamer today, and, over the weekend, he helped honor Bill Maher with the Mark Twain Prize at the Kennedy Center. In fact, C.K. recounted Maher being a particular ally to him after he admitted to sexual misconduct and saw his career derailed for a few years. (By 2022, he had won a Grammy for Best Comedy Album.) While honoring Maher, per The New York Times<\/a>, C.K. said that they had known each other for years but didn\u2019t become friends until C.K. became an \u201coutcast\u201d in 2017. Maher supported C.K., with the comedian recalling being called and getting an offer to be on the show, with Maher saying, \u201cI want to throw you a rope.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

By most accounts, this seems to be among the more outwardly laudatory comments directed at Maher in a ceremony that often focused on President Trump, someone who\u2019s both a frequent critic of Maher and fixated on the Kennedy Center. Whitney Cummings seemed to land the breakout joke of the evening, quipping that Trump was supposed to be there but \u201cHe got caught in sex traffic.\u201d There was also an extended bit where Maher sparred with impressionist Matt Friend, who impersonated Trump while Maher called him a lying blowhard, per The Washington Post<\/a>. Maher also brought up again that he hasn\u2019t won an Emmy, which is clearly a sore spot for him<\/a> even though the Mark Twain Prize would generally be considered a bigger honor. C.K. also called Maher \u201cunderrated\u201d and opined that \u201cAs a comedian, what gets overlooked is he\u2019s really funny,\u201d per the Times (which reports that C.K. \u201cadd[ed] a curse word for emphasis\u201d). The ceremony streams on Netflix on July 21. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There is no doubt that Louis C.K. is back. He has a new Netflix special arriving on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":771506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,348],"class_list":["post-771505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=771505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/771506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=771505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=771505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=771505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}