EXCLUSIVE
‘Do Everything I Say’: 10 Women Claim Comedian Chris D’Elia Preyed on Them
Ten women tell Rolling Stone the 42-year-old comedian and podcaster left them traumatized. The FBI is looking into it. D’Elia denies the allegations
Jazzmyn Wollfe was visibly uncomfortable. Sitting in the driver’s seat of her car in an open parking lot, the 28-year-old looked around and drew a quick breath, glancing at her phone perched on the dashboard recording her. Awaiting a reply on the other end of the device was comedian Chris D’Elia, who Wollfe says had instructed her to send over an explicit video of herself in public view.
Wollfe only had seconds to comply. If she didn’t send over the footage fast enough, she knew he’d become furious. She had already told D’Elia that she wasn’t comfortable being in plain sight of passersby. D’Elia, she says, didn’t care.
Minutes later, a nervous-looking Wollfe stares into the camera while wringing her hands. “It doesn’t matter if I’m feeling sad or if I’m feeling pouty, it should have been about you and I’m sorry,” she says in the November 2021 video reviewed by Rolling Stone. Wollfe claims the apology was scripted by D’Elia, who was angry that she dared to push back against his request.
The two had met in March 2020, with Wollfe responding to one of D’Elia’s Instagram Stories during the early days of the pandemic. She was familiar with D’Elia through the sitcom Whitney and had recently finished the second season of You, which he guest-starred in. Cooped up at home in Canada and recently separated from her husband, who she was still living with for the sake of their young daughter, Wollfe describes needing a distraction, and a one-off message to an attractive comedian seemed harmless. Within minutes, D’Elia responded, Wollfe says, and the conversation moved to Snapchat. By the end of the day, D’Elia had requested nude photographs; Wollfe obliged.
It almost felt like kismet, Wollfe says of their budding relationship, particularly because D’Elia had allegedly explained he was in a similarly constrained situation with his partner Kristin Taylor, who Wollfe claims D’Elia said he was only living with for the sake of their newborn. They spoke constantly every day, sending Snapchat videos back-and-forth. “I really needed something positive in my life, and it seemed like this was it,” Wollfe explains. “I had somebody who seemingly could relate so much to what I was going through in my life.”
It wouldn’t be until June 2020 that Wollfe learned the seemingly spontaneous way she came to know D’Elia mirrored the claims of many other women. That month, a woman named Simone Rossi kicked off an outpouring of allegations against D’Elia on Twitter, pointing out the irony in D’Elia playing a comedian who preys on underage girls in Netflix’s You when, she claimed, he had messaged her for photos when she was 16. Soon after, dozens of women began sharing stories anonymously of their alleged encounters with D’Elia, who they said sought them out as teens and young women on social media, soliciting nudes from them and making unwanted sexual advances. The Los Angeles Times and The Daily Beast ran initial reports containing interviews with some of the accusers, and CNN followed up with a piece that had allegations of D’Elia exposing himself to women over the years. (D’Elia vehemently denied the allegations and released email exchanges between himself and some of his accusers, which his attorney claimed exonerated him.)
But Wollfe’s story diverges from theirs in that she stayed in contact with D’Elia, going on to have what she describes as an emotionally abusive, manipulative, and controlling relationship with the comic until last year. Their relationship took place mostly online, communicating constantly through disappearing messages on Snapchat, apart from a handful of in-person encounters during two trips to Los Angeles. Still, the toll their relationship took was devastating, Wollfe claims.
“I began to actually believe [I was “nothing”] and lose such a sense of myself as an individual person because you can only hear something so many times before you start to internalize that,” Wollfe tells Rolling Stone. (Rolling Stone has reviewed various communications between Wollfe and D’Elia, photos and videos Wollfe sent to D’Elia through Snapchat, and spoken with friends and members of her family who corroborate her relationship with the comedian.)
Through his attorney, Andrew Brettler, D’Elia downplayed his relationship with Wollfe and called into question her credibility for entering into early discussions of a possible $100,000 settlement in exchange for cutting off communications with media publications. However, Wollfe says she never took any money and ended up blocking Brettler’s number when she felt he was being “manipulative.” (Brettler denied that he was being manipulative.)
For this piece, Rolling Stone has spoken with an additional nine women who detailed experiences with D’Elia that have left them shaken, including four women who recall having unsettling encounters and communications with D’Elia when they were teenagers. (Some women, including those who have previously spoken out against D’Elia, declined to participate in this story, citing fear of D’Elia and legal reasons.) Several of the women allege D’Elia took advantage of the god-like status he had with his fans for his personal sexual gratification, dangling tickets to his show to at least one woman, who claims D’Elia outright asked if she would perform a sexual favor in exchange for the free seat. One fan alleges she was 28 when D’Elia pressured her into giving him oral sex before one of his shows. When she began to cry, she says, D’Elia allegedly told her, “‘If you just do everything I say, it’ll all be OK.’”
When approached for comment, D’Elia generally denied the claims made against him, but did not provide direct responses to Rolling Stone’s multiple detailed requests for comment on specific allegations, beyond questioning the credibility of some of the women coming forward. He has previously claimed that all of his sexual encounters were legal and consensual.
In addition, Rolling Stone has learned the FBI has interviewed several of D’Elia’s accusers and potential witnesses. In a statement to Rolling Stone, an FBI spokesperson said the agency “neither confirms nor denies investigations to protect both the integrity of an investigation and the reputation of those potentially involved in it.” D’Elia did not respond to this allegation.
Wollfe and another woman, Emma*, say they were entangled in intense emotional relationships with D’Elia — which allegedly intensified and worsened after D’Elia was accused of predatory behavior in 2020. (Many of the women have requested to use a pseudonym or only their first names out of fear of retribution and online harassment.) Wollfe, Emma and two others claim that D’Elia was controlling, allegedly tracking their locations, picking out outfits, giving curfews, and pushing some of the women to get a tattoo of his initials. Wollfe and Emma describe becoming dependent on his daily instructions and increasingly isolated from their families and friends. D’Elia allegedly expected his “girls” — as he called the women he was sexting with — to send over explicit photos and videos instantaneously, otherwise he’d berate or ignore them as a form of punishment. To comply, the women claim they had to be glued to their phones, rushing to public restrooms and even pulling over on the side of the road to fulfill his requests. A frequent instruction, Wollfe claims, was to get on her knees and say she was “nothing.”
It went far beyond a consensual kink relationship, both Wollfe and Emma claim, explaining that ground rules were never established and D’Elia had deliberately and slowly inducted them into his world, sometimes using his friends to juggle his many secret relationships. Wollfe described the controlling dynamic as cult-like and both say they wouldn’t have agreed to a relationship if they had known what D’Elia would be requiring of them. Wollfe and Emma say when they tried to break things off with D’Elia he would make suicidal statements and plead with them to stay, insisting they were the only ones who understood him.
This past December, comedian Kyle Anderson released a YouTube documentary, The Chris D’Elia Problem, that revisited the previous allegations against D’Elia and shed light on the emotional and psychological abuse he allegedly inflicted in his relationships. Wollfe came forward in the YouTube documentary about her two-year relationship with D’Elia, detailing how she developed anxiety from his requests.
Emma, who ended her year-long relationship with D’Elia in the wake of the 2020 allegations, says she realized after watching the documentary that she wasn’t the only one suffering through lasting emotional abuse from D’Elia, who was either oblivious or indifferent to the damage he was inflicting on women. “In no sense of the word is my life the same,” Emma says. “I will always struggle with figuring out what feels normal in a relationship because of it… I’m not sure [D’Elia will] ever fully understand the scope of what he has done to a lot of women.”
D’Elia began his comedy career at 25, doing stand-up at L.A. clubs. The son of Hollywood producer and director Bill D’Elia, whose credits include How to Get Away with Murder, Ally McBeal, and Grey’s Anatomy, D’Elia snagged a few small parts on some of his dad’s shows, such as Boston Hope and Chicago Legal, before landing a co-starring role on close friend Whitney Cummings’ sitcom Whitney in 2011.
When Vine launched in 2013, D’Elia became an early star of the now-shuttered video-sharing app, amassing a young fan base with a co-sign from Justin Bieber, who declared D’Elia as his favorite comedian, frequently shouted him out on social media, and brought him along to participate in the singer’s Comedy Central Roast. That same year, he scored his first stand-up television special White Male. Black Comic. on Comedy Central. Soon after, he began making regular appearances on podcasts, including The Joe Rogan Experience and the Ten Minute Podcast with friends Will Sasso and Bryan Callen.
But despite D’Elia’s rising star in the comedy world and television, it was the growing popularity of his comedy podcast Congratulations that he seemed to relish the most. Launched in 2017, the hour-long podcast became beloved for D’Elia’s “rants” about his life and pop culture, and quickly developed an intensely-devoted following — something that D’Elia played heavily into with “Join Our Cult” merchandise. He was their “fearful leader” or “Daddy,” his followers were his “Babies” — the most loyal of whom were made “Elders” in the fandom. They made art, crafted rule books, and got tattoos in honor of the podcast, including outlines of D’Elia’s face and his “Life Rips” mantra. Recognizing the reach of the podcast, D’Elia began booking comedy gigs, using the road to connect in-person with fans.
While on tour, women from across the U.S. and Canada tell Rolling Stone that D’Elia seemed to preemptively scout out female fans in the city where he was about to perform. Some say they were plucked from the crowd after D’Elia had presumably trawled social media for tagged posts and his hashtag. Others claim that what began as a fan reaching out to their favorite comedian turned into purely sex-focused conversations. All have unsettling stories to share about the comedian, painting D’Elia as a shrewd manipulator and assessor of personalities — someone who knew when he was crossing a moral or ethical boundary, and almost took glee in doing so.
Two women claim D’Elia had offered them free or special tickets to his show — but with strings attached. Prior to a sold-out 2014 show in Albany, New York, Lindsay McKearn says she reached out to D’Elia for help in securing tickets. The two had messaged previously on Facebook a few years earlier, and she hoped he’d remember her. “One of Chris’s first comments when we decided that he was gonna get me into the show was, ‘Will you suck my dick?’” she recalls. (D’Elia did not respond to a request for comment.)
Teenagers were also allegedly not off limits to D’Elia’s brazen messages. (D’Elia has previously denied intentionally flirting with minors, saying he has “never knowingly pursued any underage women at any point.”)
Samantha Simmons says she was around 17 when D’Elia offered her VIP tickets to a show in South Carolina. When she mentioned that her mother would be joining her, Simmons claims D’Elia said she would need to ditch her mother at some point so they could “hang out.” She explained that her mom was her ride to the show since she didn’t have her driver’s license yet, saying she was underage. D’Elia responded with something to the effect of “you’re a little young,” but allegedly continued to message Simmons and asked for her Snapchat. Simmons never went to the show. “His intentions were very much clear,” Simmons says. “I’m really grateful that I had the sense to know that he was being a little predatory.” (Simmons’ mother corroborated her daughter’s account to Rolling Stone, recalling that D’Elia continued to message her daughter despite knowing she was underage. D’Elia did not respond to the claim.)
Simone Rossi says she was 16 when she began messaging D’Elia, who sulked when she disclosed that she didn’t live in L.A., but was from Arizona. “How [are] we supposed to make out then,” he wrote in July 2014, before asking Rossi for photos of herself. (Rossi says she sent a photo of herself in a pool.) D’Elia reached out to Rossi again in January 2015, this time saying he was in Tempe, Arizona, the day before a scheduled show and asked if they could hang out. (Both Rossi and D’Elia say he stopped messaging Rossi after he asked for her Instagram handle, where her age was clearly apparent.)
When Rossi shared the exchanges on Twitter in 2020, it prompted an outpouring of similar allegations, which paved the way for others to realize they weren’t alone. But Rossi says she’s still dealing with anxiety and paranoia due to the onslaught of online harassment she received. “It’s been a healing process for me … [there’s been] times where I didn’t think I’d make it out on the other end since I’ve come forward,” Rossi adds. “The only reason I’m speaking today on this matter is to possibly help at least one person who is really trying hard to find their voice, who may not know what they went through was wrong.” (D’Elia did not offer a response or rebuttal to Rossi’s claim.)
A Jane Doe sued D’Elia in March 2021, alleging she was 17 when she met D’Elia through social media in September 2014. She claimed the comedian “constructed a manipulative, controlling, and abusive dynamic” and “solicited and received scores” of explicit photos and videos of the high schooler, and had encouraged her to attend his comedy show in Connecticut that November where they had sex after the show. (D’Elia denied the allegations. The following month, Jane Doe withdrew her lawsuit. Her attorney declined to comment when approached by Rolling Stone.)
Aspiring comedian Jill* was new to L.A. in early 2012 when the then 19-year-old began messaging with D’Elia on Twitter and in emails in late 2011, according to communications reviewed by Rolling Stone. Weeks later, she went to D’Elia’s Sherman Oaks apartment, but when things began escalating, Jill says she told D’Elia she wasn’t interested in having sex because she was a virgin. “I saw his eyes light up,” she recalls. “He was like, ‘Does that mean if I had sex with you, it would hurt you, right?’” Jill says the comment made her feel unsafe, so she quickly left. “That was the day I learned that celebrities are not safe,” she says of the 20-minute visit. “Just because they’re celebrities does not mean they’re safe.” (D’Elia did not respond to the claim.)
Hailey* says she met D’Elia in L.A. in 2014 and was surprised that he had remembered that the 22-year-old had moved to Nashville when he reached out in August 2017 to invite her to his upcoming show, providing two free tickets. Alone after a friend left following D’Elia’s first set, Hailey recalls accepting a drink from a male member of D’Elia’s entourage. It was the last thing she remembers before waking up in her own bed the next morning. According to Hailey, the venue had to call one of her friends after she was found unresponsive in the bathroom and dumped in the green room, where she lay on the couch until the venue closed. “People pointed out to me afterward, they were like, ‘He just left you,’” Hailey says. (A friend at the time corroborated the incident, saying the venue was even considering calling an ambulance to assist Hailey. D’Elia did not respond to a request for comment.)
Jenna*, says she was in her late twenties when she began sending D’Elia nude photos after messaging him as a fan in 2018. What Jenna thought was just a flirty exchange turned into D’Elia choosing her nail color, asking questions about her waist size, and pushing her to get a tattoo in honor of him. “It did take a big toll on me,” she says of their months-long communications. “It was exhausting. You don’t want to be at someone’s snap of a finger, do whatever they want, or you get reprimanded for it. It’s not a nice way to live or feel.” (D’Elia did not respond to a request for comment.)
Amanda Koopa was a 28-year-old D’Elia superfan and made an “Elder” on Congratulations in October 2017 for constantly promoting the podcast. The two had briefly flirted on Snapchat in 2014, which ended when Koopa says she refused D’Elia’s lewd request of showing him her vagina and failed to turn up to one of his shows. Still, Koopa remained a fan and was stoked when D’Elia let her know he had booked a show in her small hometown of North Battleford in Saskatchewan, Canada, for February 2018. “I obviously felt special but also was like, ‘Why would a guy who sells out 20,000-[person] arenas come to this place?’” Koopa recalls.
One night before the show, Koopa says she got a message from D’Elia, asking her to meet him at his hotel. She recalls D’Elia previously making a comment about “head only” when discussing their meetup, but she brushed off the comment. Koopa went over to the hotel and claims D’Elia quickly began “putting his hands all over me.” The dynamic further shifted, Koopa says, when D’Elia instructed her to get on her knees. Wedged between D’Elia and the arm of the couch, Koopa says she felt cornered and scared, lowering herself to the ground while shaking and crying.
“He grabbed me by the face because I’m crying and he says, ‘Look at me,’” Koopa recalls. “I couldn’t look at him, obviously. I didn’t want to look at him. He said, ‘If you just do everything I say, it’ll all be OK.’ I thought, ‘OK.’” Koopa says D’Elia then made her perform oral sex on him, instructing her throughout and at one point, suggestively asked her how old she was. (A friend of Koopa’s confirmed to Rolling Stone that Koopa had told them about the events of that night. D’Elia, through his attorney, claimed the encounter was consensual and that Koopa was not credible and had changed her story about the encounter since she once posted a YouTube video about the alleged assault where she discussed “consent” and “gray areas” of sexual encounters.)
After reports about D’Elia began circulating online in 2020, Koopa added her own story to the dialogue, making several YouTube videos about her experience. “It took me until 2020 that everybody else came out to come to terms with how he did that to me on purpose,” Koopa explains. “He came to my tiny little hometown, he made me an ‘Elder,’ he did all that just to get power over me.”
Despite their long-distance relationship and primarily talking over Snapchat videos, Wollfe says D’Elia told her he loved her within a matter of weeks, began calling her his girlfriend, and discussed Wollfe moving to L.A. so they could be closer. Wollfe felt similarly, although now she recognizes the rapid escalation of their relationship as love-bombing. (Wollfe traveled to L.A. three times to see D’Elia, but he only met up with her on two of those trips.)
It soon became clear to Wollfe that D’Elia wasn’t monogamous, which he explained to her and she accepted. But, Wollfe says, D’Elia had different expectations for her. “He wanted full commitment from me,” Wollfe says, which she eventually honored by getting his initials tattooed on her neck in the shape of a heart. (Wollfe later had the tattoo turned into a broken heart.) “I wasn’t allowed to speak to other men. He would ask me for screenshots if men reached out to me.”
D’Elia’s controlling side slowly crept out, Wollfe says. He allegedly began making comments about not wanting Wollfe to dress “too sexy,” which resulted in her laying out outfits for D’Elia to approve. He monitored her location and if she was out with friends, Wollfe claims, and D’Elia decided how much she could drink and what time she had to be home. Wollfe says she relapsed into an eating disorder, dropping to an unsafe 100 pounds due to D’Elia’s encouragement to stay thin and “petite” for him even though he knew she had struggled with body-image issues.
“There’s certain things that should have been red flags, but I never expected how severe they would get,” Wollfe says. “I just thought, ‘OK, that’s a little odd.’ I never would have thought that the control would have gotten so intense.”
Wollfe says she gradually came to learn the scale of it — that D’Elia had women across the country doing his bidding. One of his prevailing fantasies, Wollfe claims, was having a harem-like house where his “girls” would all stay, each fulfilling a different sexual desire of his, going so far as putting Wollfe in contact with another woman so they could be roommates. “He made a comment about how once he has girls living together, how he’d want there to be a girl who just simply cleans him after a sexual encounter,” she explains.
There was another instance, Wollfe says, where she learned the extent of his other relationships, when D’Elia asked Wollfe to send him a video of herself topless on her knees, saying, “I’m a D’Elia girl.” Minutes after sending the video, Wollfe claims D’Elia sent her several Snapchat videos, each of a different woman on her knees, repeating the same phrase.
At least a dozen women were sending D’Elia nude photos and videos regularly, Wollfe and Emma estimate. They were his “girls,” and each considered themselves to be in some form of relationship or fling with D’Elia. Much like Wollfe, they were expected to send explicit footage to D’Elia upon his command.
Emma* was among those women. The then 22-year-old began messaging D’Elia in 2019. As in many other women’s accounts, Emma says the conversation turned sexual over Snapchat. For the next year, Emma describes having a relationship with D’Elia that mirrored the experiences of Wollfe’s, with D’Elia allegedly growing more controlling, particularly by monitoring Emma’s whereabouts. She recalls ruining a nice dinner with friends when D’Elia gave her a near impossible curfew in the middle of the meal. Although Emma wound up beating the clock, there was no prize in meeting D’Elia’s demands. “That’s the whole point,” Emma explains. “[The reward] was that he wasn’t mad at me.” (D’Elia did not respond to a request for comment.)
It was this fear of D’Elia cutting off communication that Emma says made her comply with things she’d never do otherwise. If it wasn’t for Covid restrictions shutting down tattoo parlors, Emma says she would have likely honored D’Elia’s request for her to be “branded” with his initials. “It’s one of those things that, when you’re in it, you don’t see it getting worse, and then, looking back and talking about it now, it’s crazy,” she says. “It happens so quietly; it just builds and builds until those kinds of things seem normal to you.”
Alexa, who requested to be identified by only her first name, used to describe herself as one of D’Elia’s “Babies,” the then 18-year-old clinging to D’Elia’s comedy when she went into treatment for an eating disorder in August 2019. After briefly messaging D’Elia on Instagram, Alexa met up with him that August after one of his shows in San Jose, California, according to screenshots reviewed by Rolling Stone. Alexa says she performed oral sex on him in his hotel room. Still in recovery, Alexa says D’Elia’s attention became a lifeline to her, believing that he cared about her well-being, claiming he would check in with her about her treatment, asking about her weight and requesting for her to step on a scale for him. Over time, Alexa says D’Elia became extremely possessive, only allowing her to call him “Daddy,” calling her his “girl,” and becoming angry if she hung out with boys. (D’Elia did not respond to a request for comment.)
That October, Alexa flew down to L.A. and caught one of D’Elia’s shows at the Laugh Factory, where he allegedly had saved a free ticket for her at the ticket booth. Alone with $6 in her pocket, Alexa says she could barely cover her sodas required by the club’s two-drink minimum. D’Elia briefly said hello ahead of his set, giving Alexa a hug and making small talk. After the show, Alexa says D’Elia said he’d meet her outside but it took two-and-a-half hours for him to emerge from the club.
“Eventually I get a text and he says he’s around the block,” Alexa says, getting into the car only to have D’Elia do a lap around the block before parking right where she got in. The encounter lasted 15 minutes. “Ultimately, he was there for one thing,” Alexa says. “I performed oral and then he said, ‘’We should fuck next time.’” It was the first big wake-up call for her. “I think that was probably my first, like, ‘I don’t think he cares about me.’”
Alexa began to gradually pull away and “weasel” out of the relationship and by the time D’Elia faced his reckoning, Alexa was able to observe from a distance, immediately recognizing what had transpired was wrong on D’Elia’s part. “Legally, he knew exactly what he was doing and that it was going to be OK. But morally, anybody in their right mind would be disgusted,” she says. “We were both legal adults. I had about four months to practice being a legal adult, and he had 20-plus years to practice. I had to learn the hard way because he chose to take advantage of someone who didn’t know the difference between right and wrong.”
Throughout the years, D’Elia has remained tight-lipped about his relationships. After his divorce from his first wife, actress Emily Montague, in 2010, he was rarely spotted in public with women. The same playbook applied when, around 2018, he began dating his now-wife Kristin Taylor, who he proposed to in summer 2019 and welcomed a son, Calvin, with in February 2020.
By that June, D’Elia’s painstaking attempts to keep his many different lives separated were obliterated by Rossi’s tweets and the surge of women sharing their alleged encounters with D’Elia.
Wollfe recalls noticing D’Elia’s name on Twitter trending and reaching out to give him a heads-up, which he allegedly hurriedly acknowledged before going dark for two weeks. Both Wollfe and Emma separately expressed feeling confused about the allegations and unsure of what to do in D’Elia’s sudden absence. “You’ve been caged for a year and then you can do whatever you want,” Emma explains. “I literally didn’t know what to do because I had somebody telling me what to do all the time.”
Other women began to find each other through social media and whisper networks, trying to piece together what had happened. “There was a definite moment in June of 2020 where I was like, ‘I think something bad happened to me,’” Emma says. “That was the first time that I realized maybe how bad the situation was because I didn’t realize the whole gravity of it until it all fell apart.”
Then suddenly, D’Elia was back. He reached out under a new Snapchat name to the women denying the allegations, issuing reassurances, and trying to get back to normalcy. After being in a state of anxiousness for weeks, Wollfe says she was willing to accept whatever reason D’Elia gave her. “I had already lost so much of myself that I felt completely lost when we weren’t in contact with him for that time,” she explains.
D’Elia also was guilt-tripping her, Wollfe claims, being less focused on denying the allegations and more so complaining that he was being abandoned by his friends and peers. Emma felt similarly, feeling almost burdened with D’Elia’s supposed mental health struggles. “I didn’t know if I stopped talking to him, if that would just increase it,” Emma explains. “So, it was almost easier to be kind in the moment.”
Meanwhile, D’Elia remained off social media until February 2021, returning with a 10-minute video to explain his absence. “Sex controlled my life,” D’Elia said in the apology video, admitting that he cheated on his then-fiancée, Taylor. “It was my focus all the time and I had a problem. I do have a problem… I need to do work on that.” He acknowledged the unfair power dynamic, saying he used the “familiarity” that he had with his fans to have sex with them. But D’Elia was adamant that while the situation “looks bad… it doesn’t show the full scope of what happened,” adding, “I stand by the fact that all my relationships have been consensual and legal. That’s the truth.”
There was an immediate shift in D’Elia’s outward persona. His Instagram, which had previously featured bits from D’Elia’s stand-up routines and clips from his podcast, suddenly showcased a softer side, with family photos and videos sprinkled throughout his feed. Slowly, D’Elia began to distance himself from the stain of the scandal so much so that he began performing again at comedy clubs. His YouTube channel regularly brings in tens of thousands of views, his TikTok is thriving with 2.3 million followers, he launched an advice podcast, Lifeline, with his brother Matt, and kicked off a new stand-up comedy tour this January.
But behind-the-scenes, the reformed image D’Elia had desperately tried to scrape together was slowly beginning to fall apart.
In private, once back in touch with D’Elia in summer 2020, both Wollfe and Emma claim that not only did D’Elia’s manipulative and controlling behavior continue, it escalated. Wollfe says D’Elia’s sexual demands became “a lot darker and a lot more intense,” once directing her to pee her pants and show him. His overall mood had darkened, they say, and gone were the casual conversations about their days. The bulk of their conversations centered around D’Elia’s needs and his sexual demands. “After the fall happened, it was much more tumultuous,” Emma adds. “The good days were good, and the bad days were terrible. You just try to make sure that on the bad days, you tiptoe around him, so you don’t set off anything.”
Slowly, Wollfe and Emma began to break away from D’Elia. “It was too weird for me,” Emma explains. “I couldn’t do it in clear conscience. I can’t do this knowing that Kristin’s there. I can’t do this there knowing that you have a kid. I don’t need to be in this at this point. I kind of bowed out of it.”
Wollfe says her first attempt to detach herself came in December 2021. “I was becoming more and more aware of the gaslighting,” she explains. “I was incredibly fed up. I snapped and I said, ‘I can’t do this.’ I value my morals so much more than what I’m getting out of this. I’m getting nothing out of it but stress and panic [and] pain.” By April 2022, Wollfe says she was gone.
In August 2022, Wollfe wanted closure and confronted D’Elia in a video call about how the way he had treated her made her feel dehumanized, especially his encouragement of her eating disorder. In a recorded conversation reviewed by Rolling Stone, D’Elia claims he had no idea how he was affecting her.
After pausing to ask Wollfe where she is — and her reassuring him by showing an empty room — he continues, “I don’t ever want people feeling bad about themselves. You know that, don’t you?” Later in the conversation, D’Elia tries to coax Wollfe into deleting all their communications, as well as the anonymous posts that she had made — along with other women — about her story on Reddit. “If you don’t mind, deleting that stuff would definitely help me with people sending me death threats and shit,” he says.
Meanwhile, Kyle Anderson and Felicia Martinez had slowly been working on their D’Elia YouTube documentary since 2020. When Wollfe began making social media posts about D’Elia, they swung into full force, adding Wollfe to the documentary, seeking out new accusers, and putting final edits on interviews they had already recorded.
D’Elia’s former tour manager Zack Doncovio came forward in the documentary, hoping his name and recounting what he witnessed while working with D’Elia from 2018 to 2019 would help lend some credibility to the women’s stories. He claims to have witnessed D’Elia purposefully seeking out women while on tour and meeting the women whom D’Elia was flying out to hook up with on the road. “I saw multiple girls on multiple occasions come out of the hotel room and the look on their face was a disgusted look,” he tells Rolling Stone. “It was those things that were the red flags, when I started [thinking], ‘Oh, something isn’t right.’” Doncovio went on to call D’Elia “predatory” and “a monster” in the documentary.
Airing in late December, the documentary sparked some rumblings on social media, particularly Reddit where D’Elia’s fans and critics began discussing the new allegations. Some were outright disturbed; others felt duped by D’Elia’s confessions of being changed. Even more were protective of D’Elia, mocking Anderson’s pedigree, doubting the women’s stories, and going on the defensive for their favorite comedian.
After a group began making plans on social media to protest outside Hollywood Improv on the same day of D’Elia’s performance, the show was suddenly canceled without reason, reported Rolling Stone. (D’Elia’s booker later claimed it was due to a conflict in D’Elia’s schedule.)
D’Elia remained silent. In his first podcast after the documentary, he avoided the accusations, instead disclosing that he had entered rehab in November. Wollfe says the timing of his stay was shortly after she contacted D’Elia’s wife Taylor in early November, according to screenshots reviewed by Rolling Stone, and offered her evidence that he had been having affairs with multiple women throughout their marriage.
Taylor seemed to accept Wollfe’s story, according to multiple screenshots of text messages reviewed by Rolling Stone, asking Wollfe if she would “be willing to talk on the phone with me and him within a therapeutic setting, both of our therapists on the phone? I need all the information as we move through this.”
(D’Elia’s attorney denied that Taylor had ever “recommended a group therapy session” between the couple and Wollfe, saying the claim “could not be further from the truth.”)
Wollfe says she never heard from either Taylor or D’Elia again, only learning through the podcast that the couple seemed to address the alleged cheating by D’Elia entering rehab. Days after the episode aired, Taylor announced that she and D’Elia were expecting their second child, and Taylor gave birth to a son earlier this month.
Throughout conversations with the many women who spoke up for this piece, many describe feeling frustrated that D’Elia and his fans have harped on about his recovery journey, his atonement, and the career pitfalls he’s suffered, while brandishing the women as liars, dismissing their feelings, or outright excusing D’Elia’s behavior.
“I’m not deflecting my part in it, but he’s deflecting his and that’s the biggest issue,” Alexa points out. “When he wrote it off as a sex addiction, everyone was like, ‘He needs help.’ He needs help? What about the girls that fell victim to his sex addiction? There’s so much collateral damage that was done that you can’t just write it off with, ‘I’m an addict and I’m gonna get help.’ What about the stuff that happened before you admitted it? That still happened.”
None of the women say they ever received any form of apology from D’Elia about how he treated them, apart from his generic public “apology” video in 2021. It was the main reason Emma felt compelled to come forward, feeling that he was refusing to acknowledge the ruin he left in his wake. “I do think some people walked away differently,” Emma says. “But if you continued a conversation with him and had a ‘relationship’ with him, you probably ended up about the same. The only outcome was ever going to be emotional scarring or emotional abuse.”
Many are adamant that speaking out now is not about “canceling” D’Elia — several don’t believe he’s even been canceled, pointing to his current nationwide tour, the success of his YouTube channel, and thriving podcast. “I don’t care about canceling him,” Jill says. “What I want now — what I think a lot of the victims want — is accountability and honesty, and for justice to be served by him stopping abusing women.”
As for Wollfe, she hopes that others who were also in similar situations with D’Elia are able to finally come to a place of healing. “These are real people who have gone through, and in some cases, are currently going through such a deep rewiring process due to the abuse they experienced,” she says. “They deserve acknowledgement. They deserve to feel OK about sharing their experience, and I hope that through the truth coming to light they are able to find that. Men in positions such as Chris’s will continue the same pattern of behavior as long as they get away with it. I hope that in Chris’s case, that ends now.”