Amy Schumer is one of the most popular comedians on the planet right now, and is without a doubt one of the most financially successful comics of her generation. But Schumer’s success is once again being undermined by allegations of plagiarism.
Videos by Rare
Schumer is no stranger to these accusations. She’s previously been accused of stealing jokes from comics including the late Patrice O’Neal, and Wendy Liebman. In January of 2016, she appeared on Jim Norton’s SiriusXM radio show to deny the allegations.
Attention is now being drawn to similarities between jokes in her most recent Netflix special, “The Leather Special,” and bits performed by comics including Dave Attell and Ali Wong on some of their previous specials.
The evidence is really starting to pile up.
If you watch a lot of comedy, chances are, you’ll see plenty of overlap. This doesn’t mean that everyone is copying each other — it just means that they’ve picked some low hanging fruit in the hope that their joke will be the first of the bunch to blow up. But in Schumer’s case, the evidence is particularly damning. No doubt some of it can be attributed to parallel thinking, but it’s starting to seem less and less likely that this is a coincidence.
It’s been a rough few months for Schumer, who recently blamed “alt-right trolls” for the negative ratings of her new Netflix stand-up comedy special. Schumer’s “The Leather Special” debuted on Netflix on March 6th, and initially had a one-star rating on the streaming service.