Louis C.K. appeared on The Howard Stern Show Monday and, in discussing his surprise-launched comedy-drama web series Horace and Pete, made quite the reveal: The show left him “millions of dollars in debt.”
“After four episodes, the whole idea was I’m not gonna have to spend my own money after that,” C.K. said. He didn’t promote the show, excited instead “by the idea of having a show appear from nothing.” Well, the surprise launch worked, but the money-making part didn’t happen as robustly as C.K. had planned.
This is not the first celebrity debt confession we’ve seen in 2016—let’s not forget the time Kanye West tweeted about being $53 million in the hole. Celebrity debt tends to be different from the debt we laypeople interact with every day. But still, after four episodes, C.K. had to take out a line of credit. He now says he’s doing a massive publicity push and that he still expects the show will pay for itself.
“I believe that by the end of a few, like by the end of summer, the whole show will have paid itself off,” C.K. said. After that happens, he said he’d consider selling it—which he has thus far resisted because he wants “to make a new avenue for making this stuff.” Listen to the full segment below.
