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With Chris D’Elia’s career crashing down around him, the comedian’s camp is surprisingly taking aim at the women who have accused him of sexual improprieties. Last Tuesday a slew of women began making claims online that D’Elia had asked them for nude pictures — some when they were underage — and one claimed that he …
With Chris D’Elia’s career crashing down around him, the comedian’s camp is surprisingly taking aim at the women who have accused him of sexual improprieties.
Last Tuesday a slew of women began making claims online that D’Elia had asked them for nude pictures — some when they were underage — and one claimed that he had exposed his erect penis to her in a hotel room. He’s since been fired by his CAA agent and his manager and a number of his shows have been pulled from streaming sites.
Now reps for D’Elia, who played Whitney Cumming’s boyfriend on NBC’s “Whitney” for several seasons, have released emails to Page Six which — they claim — paint a fuller picture of the incidents.
They provided an email between D’Elia and Clara Schaller, a woman who last week posted emails from 2012 on Twitter in which D’Elia said in he wanted to have “naked sex” with her. When she made them public, she claimed that she was 17 at the time of the exchange. D’Elia’s camp released an email to us that showed D’Elia had allegedly asked her approximately midway through their exchange, “How old are you?” She replied “12,” apparently kidding. He responded, “Answerrrrr,” to which she said, “24?”
It should be noted that he asked her for “pics” before asking her age, and continued the lewd conversation, even though he didn’t get a straight answer on her age.
Another woman, Colleen Riley, posted a 2014 message from D’Elia in which he asked her to “make out,” followed by another in which she said, “Chris, I’m 16.” D’Elia’s camp gave us another email in that chain, in which he allegedly replied, “Oh sh**. I thought you were at my [standup] show. Gotta be 18 [to get into that] at least. My bad. Bye.” The reps pointed out that Riley didn’t include that message in the series that she made public.
And finally, they released an email from Simone Rossi, one of the first women to accuse D’Elia of misconduct. Rossi told the LA Times that she had an online exchange with D’Elia in 2015 when she was 16, and claimed that he’d asked her to “make out” and send him pictures of herself.
On Wednesday D’Elia’s camp released an email from October 2019, in which Rossi allegedly wrote to D’Elia, “I’m 21 now and [down to f***].” His reps say D’Elia didn’t respond to her.
Yet Rossi also wrote on Twitter alongside her screenshots of his messages, “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 of ur own age.”
She added, “He was the one that used the power imbalance between us to his advantage so f*** chris d’elia.”
D’Elia’s reps didn’t provide rebuttals or additional messages in response to any of the many other allegations, which the LA Times described as “an avalanche of screenshots” of exchanges between D’Elia and women.
In the same story in the Times, a woman named Laura Vitarelli (who was not a minor at the time) said that in 2015 he invited her and a friend to a party at this New York City hotel after a gig. She said that when they arrived, there was no sign of a party.
Eventually they decided to leave, but the Times reports, “as they started to gather their things, both women say, he pulled down his sweatpants, pulled out his erect penis and asked: ‘Are you sure about that?’”
After the allegations surfaced, D’Elia told TMZ, “I have never knowingly pursued any underage women at any point,” adding, “All of my relationships have been both legal and consensual and I have never met or exchanged any inappropriate photos with the people who have tweeted about me.”
He said he’s “truly sorry,” and that “I was a dumb guy who ABSOLUTELY let myself get caught up in my lifestyle. That’s MY fault.”
Of the newly released emails, D’Elia’s rep told Page Six, “It is important that the public has all the information to make an informed decision on the coordinated attacks on Chris D’Elia,” adding that “these messages help prove that all of Chris’s relationships were both legal and consensual.”
D’Elia played a character who preyed on young women in both Netflix hit “You.” It’s star, Penn Badgely, said on a podcast this week that the claims, “did affect me deeply.” He added, “I was very troubled by it.”
Cummings has said of the allegations, “I’m devastated and enraged by what I’ve read and learned.” She added, “This is a pattern of predatory behavior. This abuse of power is enabled by silence. Now that I’m aware, I won’t be silent.”
According to Deadline, Comedy Central, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video all removed an episode of the series “Workaholics” in which he also played a child molester, and Comedy Central has removed one of his specials.
Schaller, Riley and Rossi didn’t respond to our requests for comment by press time.
