In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Macdonald, the former “Saturday Night Live” cast member who has a Netflix talk show debuting Friday, said he was “happy the #MeToo movement has slowed down a little bit.” He criticized a lack of “forgiveness” for the performers who had “all their work in their entire life being wiped out in a single day, a moment.”

Louis C.K., a comedian who wrote the forward for Macdonald’s 2016 book, “Based on a True Story,” was accused of sexual misconduct by five women. Barr, who gave Macdonald one of his earliest writing jobs, on “Roseanne,” lost her rebooted show on ABC after a racist tweet in May.

“Roseanne was so broken up that I got Louis to call her, even though Roseanne was very hard on Louis before that,” he said in the interview. “But she was just so broken and just crying constantly. There are very few people that have gone through what they have, losing everything in a day. Of course, people will go, ‘What about the victims?’ But you know what? The victims didn’t have to go through that.”

Macdonald apologized on Twitter, saying the two performers were “very good friends of mine” but that he “would never defend their actions.”

NBC canceled Macdonald’s appearance on Jimmy Fallon’s “Tonight Show” hours before it was set to air.

“Out of sensitivity to our audience and in light of Norm Macdonald’s comments in the press today, ‘The Tonight Show’ has decided to cancel his appearance on Tuesday’s telecast,” the network said in a statement.

“The Tonight Show” experienced a steep ratings drop after President Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 election, losing its top position to the more politically minded Stephen Colbert and “The Late Show” on CBS. In a moment that long haunted Fallon, he tousled Trump’s hair during a much-maligned interview in September 2016.

In the Hollywood Reporter interview, which was published Tuesday, Macdonald said Fallon had been unfairly criticized. Macdonald said talk show hosts, including Fallon, had been “forced to become political pundits.”

“He is just all about fun and silliness,” he said of Fallon. “That’s what his audience wants. And then to be maligned for quote-unquote humanizing Trump. Funny, I thought he was a human.”

Netflix did not immediately return a message asking if it would move forward with its new show, “Norm Macdonald Has a Show.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Daniel Victor © 2018 The New York Times