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Disgraced comedian Chris D’Elia has made his comeback to stand-up comedy even after all the sexual harassment claims against him.
The You star made a surprise appearance at Hollywood’s Laugh Factory and quipped about getting ‘cancelled’ after being slapped with #MeToo claims.
The Hollywood Reporter cited a source claiming that the comedian made an indirect reference at his sexual misconduct allegations as he “joked about being cancelled.”
“It was a lot of self-loathing humour. At one point, he made some crude jokes and said that he wasn’t sure if he crossed a line but that he couldn’t really be cancelled twice,” the source told the portal.
Last year, D’Elia had faced a storm of allegations against himself, of preying on teenage girls and sending inappropriate messages.
Screenshots of his conversations with young girls have been making rounds on the internet where he had allegedly sent inappropriate texts to then-16-year-old Simone Rossi, who shared the pictures on social media.
The 40-year-old comic and actor had essayed the role of a child molester on Netflix’s widely-famous series You.
“Like the literal IRONY,” Rossi tweeted as she exposed the screenshots.
“Imagine being 16 and being groomed by a stand up comedian twice ur age and the only reason you never met up and never got physically m*lested was because u had just gotten a boyfriend ur own age [sic],” she said.
“For the longest time i thought it was embarrassing for ME that i was interacting with this older man but he was the one who DM’d me on twitter and was the one who was twice my age and was the one that used the power imbalance between us to his advantage,” she added.
Soon after, another woman named Abby Grills stepped forward and shared more screenshots of her conversations with the comedian while she was 17 and he was 30.
“Gimme yer # again!” his alleged text read. “You’re insistent! why?” she had replied.
“Because I like you. Duh. And plus, you know you kinda like it. Sooooooo what is it?” he had said.
“Sorryyy. i mean you’re 30 and all,” she shot back.
Sharing the messages, Grills wrote on Twitter: “What’s really weird to me looking back at these is that in my head, he didn’t know I was 17 until I told him to stop messaging me. But I now see I told him several times. I had been giving him the benefit of the doubt all these years.”
All allegations have been denied by the comic, as he told TMZ that he “never knowingly pursued any underage women at any point”.