Comedy Central has decided to air a special star ring comic Artie Lange next week, despite the comedian’s suicide attempt earlier this month.
The hour-long special, “Jack and Coke,” has been on the network’s January schedule since last November, says a Comedy Central spokesperson.
“There were some initial thoughts as to whether or not [the special] was appropriate to air,” a spokesman for the channel said yesterday.
But “knowing that he was going to be okay and once we made the decision to keep it, we didn’t give it a second thought.
“Were this to have taken the ultimate tragic turn, we may have acted differently with our decision,” the spokesperson said — adding that the network also would have had “a different discussion if it was airing five days after we first heard the news.”
But ulitmately, the decision was made to go ahead.
Shot during Lange’s May performance at Gotham Comedy Club, the special was meant to be one of a number of comedy club specials to air during the network’s annual standup month.
Lange, best known as Howard Stern’s radio sidekick, had previously hosted the network’s “Live at Gotham” series, but “Jack and Coke” was supposed to be his first starring special for the network.
Lange reportedly stabbed himself in the stomach nine times with a 13-inch knife on Jan. 2, according to reports. He was hospitalized and has since been released.
The network says it was aware that it might be accused of exploiting a tragic situation but also, for Lange’s sake, did not want to over-react to what was a personal matter.
“When we first heard the news, we were concerned about [Lange’s] own well-being . . . and were in touch with his camp to keep abreast of how he was doing,” the Comedy Central spokesperson said.
When they were told that Lange was stabilized and would come through the ordeal, officials “took a second look at the special to make sure that there was nothing about suicide or knives in it that could be considered insensitive to air given the context of what he’d done to himself.”