Sarah Silverman breaks silence on 'best friend' Louis C.K.: 'Can you love someone who did bad things?'

Sarah Silverman is speaking out about the scandal surrounding her close friend Louis C.K.

Silverman addressed the swirl of news surrounding C.K. — the Louie star has admitted to masturbating in front of multiple women without their consent — in an emotional monologue on Thursday’s episode of her Hulu series I Love You America. In the clip, which you can watch above, a clearly choked-up Silverman struggles to reconcile the terrible stories we’re now hearing with the man she knows and loves.

After saying “I really, really, really don’t want to” comment on the C.K. situation, she remembers herself stating that “if it’s mentionable, it’s manageable,” and so she turns to “address the elephant masturbating in the room.” She calls C.K. “one of my best friends of over 25 years” before detailing his crimes: “He wielded his power with women in f–ked-up ways, sometimes to the point where they left comedy entirely.”

She could mention what a great father she knows C.K. to be, she says, “but that’s totally irrelevant, isn’t it?” She calls the whole situation “a real mindf–k: I love Louis, but Louis did these things. Both of those statements are true.” She keeps asking herself: “Can you love someone who did bad things?” And she admits she’s still struggling to answer that question: “I hope it’s OK if I am at once very angry for the women he wronged and the culture that enabled it… but also sad, because he’s my friend.”

Silverman strikes a hopeful note at the end, though, that all of this is a necessary reckoning for our society: “We need to be better. We will be better. I can’t f–king wait to be better.”