By E. Alex Jung

Brian Jordan Alvarez, Jon Ebeling, and Stephanie Koenig have a shirtless dance party at Alvarez’s apartment in December 2015, during which they took pictures and posed. Photo: Courtesy of Jon Ebling

For many, the premiere of FX’s English Teacher in September marked the long-awaited arrival of Brian Jordan Alvarez, the comedy series’ creator and star. For the better part of the past decade, Alvarez has been making things on the internet — first YouTube sketches, followed by a beloved web series called The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo and, most recently, a menagerie of characters on TikTok, the most famous of which, TJ Mack, has gone viral multiple times over. “I’ve had enough amateur practice rounds of this to know what I’m doing,” he told the New York Times ahead of the premiere. On English Teacher, he plays Evan Marquez, a beleaguered high-school teacher in Austin, Texas, trying to separate the colliding streams of his personal life as a gay man and his work life in conservative environs. The show received universally good reviews for its topicality and wit: It was “a deft, brutal trench comedy,” “radically playful,” simply “the best new sitcom.”

L.A. comedy nerds may recognize many members of Alvarez’s old crew on English Teacher. Stephanie Koenig, his longtime collaborator, writes on the show and plays Gwen Sanders, Evan’s fellow teacher and, in a replication of their real-life dynamic, his best friend. Her husband, Chris Riggi, plays her boyfriend, Nick. Populating the smaller roles are Ken Kirby and Michael Strassner — both of whom came up through the Groundlings, the 50-year-old L.A. improv institution. They were part of a friend group formed about nine years ago, during a time when they were struggling actors, going to one another’s shows and starring in one another’s sketches with the hopes of making it. Alvarez was at the center. “Everybody was attracted to Brian because when he wanted to do something, he would do it,” remembers a former friend. “He was the go-getter and then hired all his friends.”

There has been one notable absence amid their recent breakthrough: Jon Ebeling, an actor who was once a core member of the friend group. Alongside Alvarez and Koenig, Ebeling had been one of the central characters in Caleb Gallo. When the series debuted in 2016, its pitter-patter dialogue and loose sexuality made it a cult favorite — the writer Jude Dry described it as “Will & Grace on speed.” Caleb Gallo was a télévision à clef in which the actors played versions of themselves: Alvarez was Caleb, Koenig was Karen, and Ebeling was Billy. The plot of the first few episodes drew from the romantic triad that existed among them in real life; Ebeling had a crush on Koenig, and she liked him back, while Alvarez had a crush on Ebeling. Their characters’ apartments were their real apartments, and their lives became material for the show. A major plot point is a sexual encounter between Caleb and Billy that occurs after Billy and Karen have sex for the first time. It is a nearly beat-for-beat reenactment of what transpired among the three actors off set. In the show, it’s played as a romp — the sexual experimentation of 20-somethings. Ebeling says in reality, he felt pressured by Alvarez. Then, Ebeling alleges, Alvarez sexually assaulted him while shooting that very scene.

For the past few years, Ebeling has been telling a version of this story to anyone who will listen. On his Instagram Stories about a month before English Teacher premiered, he dashed off a message over the promotional poster, writing, “My personal experience with the Cre*tor of this show was much closer to the plot of B*by Reind**r than whatever this is,” referring to Richard Gadd’s Netflix series about his own experience being groomed and raped by a successful TV creator. “Gonna skip this one.” Watching Baby Reindeer, he could see Alvarez in both the character of Martha, who love-bombs and stalks Gadd’s character, Donny, as well as the TV writer Darrien, who repeatedly assaults Donny while dangling the carrot of success. Those on Alvarez’s side see Ebeling as the Martha and argue that he isn’t giving the full context of the relationship. (Alvarez declined to be interviewed but responded to some questions through a representative.)

On September 1, the day before the English Teacher premiere and more than eight years after the occurrence, Ebeling filed a police report with the LAPD and later reported Alvarez to the Screen Actors Guild (California law allows civil claims of sexual assault to be filed up to ten years after the fact). By then, his Instagram post had traveled far in comedy circles. “So many people are championing English Teacher online, going, ‘This is the funniest show on TV,’” says one L.A.-based comic. “And everyone at the bars is going, ‘Oh my God, when is the story going to break about Brian?’”