Katherine Ryan has claimed a comedian exposed his own sex tapes to her and fellow comics at a gig. The presenter revealed that one female co-star was left visibly shaken after the male showed them the videos just before they went on stage.
Although Katherine didn’t name the man in question, she explained that he was “very powerful,” “very famous” but “not British.” The incident took place in an artists green room, where the talent hangs out before heading out onto a TV studio floor or onto a stage. Speaking on a podcast, Katherine, 41, explained that she was one of few women on the bill on the day the incident took place.
“He was very famous, very rich, very powerful,” Katherine said. The Canadian star went on to add: “He was in a room on a big show. I was one of very few women on that bill, maybe three women. And there was a young female comedian who was starting out who was next to him, and he was with all the lads, showing pictures and videos on his phone that he had taken of himself having sex with women.
“So, like, really intimate photos, intimate videos and he was showing them. His penis was in a lot of these videos.” During her discussion on the Niptuck podcast, the mum-of-two continued: “She felt very uncomfortable about that and then she came into my dressing room to be like, ‘Oh, I didn’t like him showing me that’ and she’s about to go on stage.
“She’s very new. I was even quite new at that time, but yeah, stuff like that and being a minority in that situation, which female comedians, especially when I was starting out, were always minorities.” Showing another person a sexually explicit image or video of another person without their consent is imaged-based abuse.
The offence applies to sharing sexually explicit content online, in person via photographs or videos, or via text message. Under a new criminal act, private materials are those that are showing things not usually seen in public.
This not only covers images that show the pubic region of an individual but can also be counted as a picture or video of somebody engaging in sexual behaviour or posing in a proactive way, the government states.
The star went on to tell the hosts that in every green room, there are things that men can do – but women can’t. “We can’t take a night bus. We can’t sleep on the floor with like, four other comedians starting out a lot of times,” she said.
Katherine went on to add: “We have children that we have to look after, and then we get fans who, like, could kill us.” She later praised comedian Nikki Glaser, who Katherine claims makes light of the tricky situations women in the industry find themselves in.
“Nikki Glaser, who’s doing amazing in America and is hosting the Golden Globes for the second year in a row, she would make a joke of it on her Instagram,” she said, before adding: “She’d be like, come kill me in Cincinnati at 7pm come kill me in San Diego. I’ll be here at 8pm we have to publish where we are at night, and we’re always alone. It’s a bit different.”
This however, is not the only time Katherine has spoken out against behaviour by men. In the early days of her career, she said that she had a following of “strange lone-wolf men” following her, often to the train and explained that some of her interactions were “scary.”
The Mirror has approached Katherine for comment.
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