Hey there Steemit,
If you've been following the news lately you've probably seen some pretty bad stuff about the Lethal Weapon actor Clayne Crawford.
If you're not up to date on the subject let me give you the short-short version.
Clayne Crawford the actor who plays Martin Riggs in Fox's TV Series Lethal Weapon was let go on May the 13th 2018.
Some of you might actually be up to date on this and are wondering, "Why the hell are you bringing this crap up again?! Obviously, Clayne is an entitled Hollywood asshole who is quick to lose his temper and explodes on set!"
If you have been watching the news this is probably how you feel about the situation.
Well, I'm here to tell you there's more to the story than what the media has been telling.
Most of the Media is so gung-ho to get a story, they don't actually investigate or do any sort of real journalism. They rewrite an article in their own words or skim the article getting a ton of facts wrong in their own reporting. This can cause a bunch of barely investigated news to be spread.
Monica Gleberman, became a vocal advocate for getting the whole story out there. She helped make the Variety Article possible.
I want to walk you through the Tweets/Instagram posts/Articles and hopefully give you a pretty good idea of what happened.
EXCLUSIVE: Lethal Weapon is the youngest and highest rated of the three Warner Bros TV drama series for Fox, so its renewal had been considered a no-brainer. But a behind-the scene issue involving one of the two leads, Clayne Crawford, is making a third season a rather complex proposition.
The public story starts on April 23rd. Deadline announced that the show was put in jeopardy because of Clayne Crawford's behavior on set.
The Day after, on the 24th of April, Clayne posted an Apology letter on Instagram explaining his version of the two instances he was written up.
After the Deadline article and Clayne's apology, people began looking for all the information they could find to see what exactly had happened.
If Fox decides to bring back Lethal Weapon for a third season — and that’s a big if — it will be without co-lead Clayne Crawford. Multiple sources confirm to TVLine that Fox and its studio partner Warner Bros. are actively searching for an actor to replace the embattled actor in the role of Martin Riggs. The outcome of the 11th hour recasting effort will largely determine whether Fox renews the series for Season 3.
On May 8th TVLine broke the news that they had several sources saying that Clayne was to be replaced and that Warner Brothers was actively looking for a replacement. The source also noted that the final decision was not officially made yet.
claynecrawford When everyone seems to know your future but you. Zero communication with Fox or Warner Bros.
I hope I'm not fired!! Dang.
The above Instagram post is Clayne obviously confused about if he was fired or not.
Damon Wayans Posted the above tweet to clarify that Clayne was a Liability.
There are obvious racial undertones here but I don't know why he would bring this up.
On May 10th 3 days before Clayne was fired Damon Wayans began joking about Clayne Crawford replacements.
When you are on the road to success but you decide to drink and drive, whose fault is the accident? Every other driver? ~DamonKWayans
The MLK tweet is a response to the quoted tweet above. Damon responded that he believed that he was shot and that it was hard to forgive.
This got people thinking that Damon was, in fact, the person who was injured in Clayne's Instagram Apology.
Twitter post's from Damon's account announced that he had, "Sobered up." and then began Praising Clayne. I also heard that Damon's account posted some angry tweets at fans and Clayne.
Damon said that his account was hacked and had it taken down.
His account was re-enabled a day or so later and the post's praising/angry at Clayne/twitter users were no longer on Twitter.
I want to note I was only able to find three of the deleted tweets. I also want to note the date of the tweet above as being before Clayne was fired and that the angry/praising tweets were on or before the 12th of May.
Early May 13th TVLine broke that Warner Brother's/Fox decided to hire Seann William Scott.
“Seann is a fantastic addition to this already amazing cast,” said Michael Thorn, Fox’s president of entertainment. “Lethal Weapon is packed with action, drama and pure fun and we can’t wait to see Damon and Seann together on screen.”
claynecrawford To my cast and crew - CONGRATULATIONS on season 3! To the Fans - Thank you for the overwhelming support and love.
Riggs was a dream role and the experience will live with me forever. My heart is full.
Good Luck nxt season!!
Based on the current information Clayne was never informed he was fired. Once the TVLine article broke that is likely how he found out. He Posted his Farewell Instagram post after the TVLine article on May 13th.
A source named BTSinHollywood claimed the show went on hiatus the evening of April 13th. They said that when they finished up on set April 13th Clayne told the crew he would see them in a few months. This combined with the May 8th post lead me in the direction that he was not informed till the day of the Public Announcement.
Michelle believes she knows who BTSinHollywood is and accused several people on the crew of being BTSinHollywood.
There will be more post's from Michelle Mitchenor in the proper chronological order. Michelle Mitchenor is a recurring character known as one of the Lethal Weapon characters on the "B" Team. Her character name is Sonya Bailey.
BTSinHollywood is a crew member whose identity is unknown but was a participant in the Variety Article above.
BTSinHollywood is a supporter of Clayne Crawford along with a lot of the cast and crew.
In reaction to the two Clayne Crawford Instagram post's, many people who love Clayne ended up going on an internet hunt to find out as much about the incident as possible.
Many people had heard or started rumors that Damon Wayans was at fault for getting Clayne fired. They were looking for someone or something to throw their rage at and Damon was the target for them.
On May 14th in response to the questioning and accusations, Damon Wayans Posted these tweets to address peoples confusion:
The three tweets up above are Damon Wayans talking about Season 2 Episode 20 where Clayne was directing an episode of the show.
Damon claimed that he was shot on the side of his head. The tweet directly above this has text that is supposed to corroborate Damon's story. Since the text is just another part of his tweet it is hard to tell what source is saying this.
Clayne claimed Damon was hit with shrapnel from a controlled explosion on set.
I asked if Warner Brother's did an investigation into the shrapnel/shot incident and BTSinHollywood said they did do an investigation. The investigation showed that Damon was not Shot and that he was in fact hit by Shrapnel.
Damon obviously did not believe the investigation and was angry enough to post the 3 tweets above.
Wayans was struck on the back of the head by a piece of shrapnel, suffering a laceration. “Wayans said he was fine,” one crew member said, adding that he refused medical attention. Shortly thereafter, he left the set, and the remainder of the scene was shot with Wayans’ stunt double standing in for the actor. Wayans’ assistant was seen later using his phone to take video of playback from the incident on one of the production’s monitors.
A crew member from the Variety backed up Claynes claims of the accident being a piece of shrapnel and that when asked Damon refused medical treatment and said he was "Fine".
I heard rumors that Damon wanted to have the special effects crew fired and that Clayne came to their rescue. So I personally asked BTSinHollywood if he believed this to be true.
Clayne was written up for this incident, however, BTSinHollywood said that other accidents have happened on set and no other Director took the blame or was written up.
The Day after Damon's injury Damon refused to do any more stunts with the special effects crew or with Clayne directing.
Clayne heard about this and went to talk with Damon in his trailer about it. Damon's Son-In-Law put his hands on Clayne and aggressively chest-bumped him blocking him from talking to Damon.
Damon heard the altercation and came out of his Trailer and got into a shouting match with Clayne.
The above tweet is about Matt Miller and Damon Wayans getting into an altercation.
Damon called Matt Miller over to help with the situation and got into a separate altercation with him. Similar to the incident with Damon's Son-in-law Damon aggressively chest bumped Matt Miller. They were arguing about Damon not wanting to do or be around stunts/action/gunfire.
This is when Warner Brothers hired Guards to break up any fights that might happen for the last two episodes.
The video below is explicit if you don't prefer to hear the profanity the video's relevant dialog is below:
Crawford: “You know, I’ve seen [name deleted] handle hits better than you did yesterday.”
Wayans: “Suck my d–k.”
Crawford: “You know, that was the biggest p–y move I think I’ve ever seen.”
Wayans: “Yeah, I’m a p—y.”
Crawford: “A p–y. You’re the biggest crybaby p—y I’ve ever met in my life.”
Wayans: “Well suck this pussy’s d–k.”
Crawford: “I mean, how does it feel to only be in the game because your f–king brothers are in the game?”
Wayans: “F–k you. F–k you.”
A bit of a warning clicking the video will not open in a new window you need to right click it and click "open in a new tab/window."
In the above video is an argument between Clayne and Damon and then the second half is a video of Clayne getting angry at the noise from children playing in a pool when it was closed.
The second half of the video is a section all in itself but not relevant to the above tweets. I will address this below.
In this tweet, Damon accuses Warner Brothers TV of not defending him when in fact Clayne was fired the day before. He probably wanted Warner Brothers to make a statement defending him as well as the firing.
Damon then claims that crew members put up stickers stating that Clayne was an "Emotional Terrorist."
Of the 31 people Variety spoke with, none said they recalled seeing the “emotional terrorist” stickers on the Warner Bros. lot.
The Variety article interviewed 31 cast/crew members some for and some against Clayne and not a single one of them saw the stickers around the lot.
A game developer did some google maps research on the Warner Brothers Lot and tried to find the location of the photo. His search didn't find any place where Damon's photo could be located.
Damon also claimed in his Tweet that Clayne enjoyed making women cry.
Hilarie Burton who was a guest cast member also did not agree:
This was not an isolated incident of defense from one woman. Multiple women from the cast and crew also came forward.
The above 3 tweets are from Michelle Mitchenor. They have all been deleted. Someone named dudski on twitter made the screenshots above.
The two tweets above state that Michelle was often only on the set 1 day per shoot. That she was not around during the time Clayne became frustrated and yelled at Newman.
I was also informed that when she was there Michelle would often stay in her trailer when not rehearsing or shooting. So she was not around very often to see any of the arguments go down. She would bring her dog, which is not allowed on the Warner Brother's lot. She would then make crew members watch the dog when she was acting. She would often take her time when called to set and was occasionally late. Despite this, she was generally a kind person.
She was once over an hour late and her shot was the first shot of the day causing the whole production to be delayed over 2 hours. She didn't apologize her only reaction was, "Oops! I overslept!"
One crew member, comparing Crawford and Wayans, told Variety, “I would rather work every day with an actor who comes in prepared and knows their lines and is passionate about their role and cares about the show gives 150% of his heart and soul into it than someone who comes in every day and says ‘I wish this show was canceled, I hate this show, it feel like I’m in jail,’ even if he ultimately gives a great performance,” said the crew member. “It is unbelievably difficult to work with someone who literally tells everyone that he hates what he does every day. And that is what Damon does every day.”
The Quote above is from the Variety article.
The above tweet is about Damon also saying he hated the job and wished he wasn't there.
The rest of the above tweet was me asking if Damon may have been jealous because Clayne seemed to "Steal the Spotlight." I've heard this question many times and wanted to get an opinion on it.
Wayans’ allegation that Crawford purposefully hit Henriksen — a veteran actor who was later replaced in the episode — with a bottle was rejected by multiple crew members. According to a copy of the script from that episode, obtained by Variety, Crawford’s character was to toss a bottle of green tea to Frankie (Henriksen). Per a cast member and a high-ranking crew member, Henriksen had trouble catching the bottle in multiple takes and declined when Crawford asked if the scene should be changed so that he would hand Henriksen the bottle. Finally, one of the tosses missed and hit Henriksen in the face. Witnesses described the incident as a minor accident, and filming continued.
I think the quote and 2 tweets from above by Variety and BTSinHollywood does a pretty good job here in explaining this incident.
In this Tweet, Damon quits Twitter again. He also mentions privilege which he probably is directing towards outraged people tweeting at him.
Damon reenabled his twitter account after the Variety article came out.
He changed his Twitter Bio which you can see in the above picture.
The "Employed actor" part of the bio likely is a jab at Clayne or towards Twitter users who upset him.
Warner Bros. has, according to sources, moved quickly to make significant changes on set, notifying roughly a quarter of the show’s nearly 100 regular on-set crew members that they are not being asked to return for Season 3. Many of the position changes are a result of concerns about poor performance in the art department. But several other crew members who were friendly with Crawford are being let go, according to sources, in part to provide a fresh start for Season 3.
The quote above is from the Variety article. I was informed that there were closer to 200 regular employees and not 100. I was also informed that the number of people fired is close to 70 people. Almost 40% of the crew was fired.
Damon's changed bio above is extremely insensitive to the almost 70 people fired.
A bit of a warning clicking the video will not open in a new window you need to right click it and click "open in a new tab/window."
This is a repost of the video from above for easy access because this article is so long.
Finally, we can talk about the second part of the video.
This is from Season 2 Episode 9 "Fools Rush In."
Again below I have posted the dialog with no explicit language.
The Scene is with Derek Richardson and Clayne together. Kids are breaking the rules and swimming in a closed swimming pool.
Clayne: What do you think I should do?
Derek: I don't know
Clayne: Whats that?
Derek: I DON"T KNOW!
Clayne: Shut the F-K Up!
Clayne: Goddamnit Newman
Clayne: F-King they are right here!
Clayne: Get someone in here with a F-King walkie!
Clayne: and shut 'em the F-K up!
Clayne: Or did we not pay for this F-King place?!
Clayne: If we did, Shut 'em the F-K up!
“He lost his cool and got angry,” one crew member said of Crawford. “He should have handled it another way, sure. But we were all tired and angry.” But another crew member described Crawford as “apoplectic” and his behavior as inappropriate.
The above is a snippet from the Variety article.
The director in question is Eric Laneuville.
So it seems that after 3 days of filming with multiple mishaps and an extremely negligent Guest Director/Producers Clayne loses his temper. To me, it looks like Clayne was actually the opposite of quick to lose his temper.
I don't really understand why someone didn't just send an intern to the manager's office to enforce the pool's closure.
The Director in charge of the Episode was Damon's friend.
One actor told producers after the first day of shooting episode five that they no longer wished to work on future episodes directed by Laneuville, who also declined to comment for this story.
The above is a snippet from the Variety Article.
How has Clayne responded to all these allegations? Other than wishing the crew luck on the new Season he's had little to no response. What little response he has had is just thanking fans on Twitter for the support. He has also been liking tweets from BTSinHollywood and other Cast/Crew/Fans.
The one incident that Variety wrote about that really hasn't been talked much about was this:
Others who worked on the show, however, described a more combative Crawford. One crew member described being subjected during a meeting to a profanity-laced tirade by Crawford that lasted so long, they began to actively tune him out, waiting for the incident to end. Another crew member present confirmed witnessing the episode.
I asked BTSinHollywood about the "Profanity-Laced triad" incident but they were not there to see this happen. BTSinHollywood did say that Clayne would yell at the 1st Assistant Directors but just as often if not more the 1st Assistant Directors would yell at the cast and crew. BTSinHollywood also stated that at one point the 1st Assistant Directors were yelling at the crew for what seemed like no reason and Clayne was not happy about it and told them so.
This leads me to believe that it was probably one of the 1st Assistant Directors that made the comment about having to tune Clayne's yelling out.
The failures didn't end with just the directing of the show. I learned that nearly every higher up on the show barely spent any time on set with the actors. Most would spend their time in their favorite places which happened to be away from the set. One Executive Producer was never on set except for during the Pilot episode.
The 1st Assistant Director's seemed to have free reign, and screaming at anyone who was not doing exactly what they wanted. No Producers or Executive Producers were on set to see any of this go down.
Clayne stood up to the 1st Assistant Director's because they were constantly yelling at the cast and crew. He was branded apocalyptic and aggressive for defending his crew.
I plan on writing a more detailed account the failings for each the producers so please watch out for that.
On Crawford’s ouster and bringing back Lethal Weapon with a new co-star, Scott, playing a new character (believed to be Rggs’ brother), Fox chairman Dana Walden said, “It wasn’t our choice. Our partners at Warner Bros. came to us and said that they could not deliver the show as it was.”
She noted that it was a difficult decision on both the part of the studio and the network. After the studio presented Fox with Scott as a replacement, the network signed off on a third season.
Fox in this instance is a Distributor and Warner Brothers is in charge of all Hiring and Firing.
No episode count was announced but I hear that, despite the fact that Lethal Weapon‘s third season is premiering in the fall, its order is for 13 episodes, not the standard full-season 22.
I hear the unusual order is believed to be a way for Fox to hedge its bet on the risky reboot. Changing a co-lead on a show could go either way. On today’s upfront call, Fox chairman Gary Newman gave NYPD Blue as an example of a show, which went through a lead replacement in Season 2 after star David Caruso exited and went to have a long and successful run with Jimmy Smits as a replacement.
The Deadline article above says that Season 3 with Seann and Damon has been reduced to a 13 episode season. I don't know who their sources are but so far they have been correct every time. I would like to note however that IMDB states differently and that there are 22 Season 3 Episodes.
If you are wondering how Clayne is doing he has a job lined up for a movie called "Canal Street". You can see what the movie is about on IMDB.
I suppose you may want to hear my opinion on this but my brain is currently on information overload.
I will, however, bring up some things I noticed that I did or didn't like.
I noticed Damon Wayans seems to slander Clayne Crawford on more than one occasion. This in itself made it pretty hard to write this.
I believe that Damon Wayans believed that he was shot. I also believe that he thought Clayne did it on purpose somehow. Clayne was written up for something that no other director was written up for even when they had on set accidents.
I believe that Damon Wayans wanted the Special effects team fired and that Clayne who believed that he followed all the rules, cared too much about the crew and would not let the Special effects team be fired.
In the second half of the video above, I had to go through and write the dialog line by line. Listening to Clayne yelling over and over like he was ended up being pretty scary.
I found that when talking with BTSinHollywood they spoke like they were there and added details that only someone who worked on the set with them would know. They were very polite and I enjoyed my talks with them.
I also could not get through with this without at least bringing up that Damon brought up race more than once. I think maybe he received some hurtful tweets from people and he was lashing out trying to defend himself. Just like Clayne, he said some things in anger.
I also noticed from the sources I used that Clayne who was considered to be the violent one was not violent at all. However, Damon and his Son-in-Law were the ones who actually got in peoples faces and laid hands on other people.
This took me an extremely long time to make and I appreciate you if you've made it this far.
I tried to keep this article as unbiased as possible which turns out was pretty hard to do. I had to rewrite the thing at least 3 times just to make sure it felt right or that I wasn't leading the reader.
My spelling is absolutely horrible so I would actually like to thank Grammarly for helping me write the biggest article I've ever written.
I also want to thank Google and Google Drive for saving my ass when I accidentally posted the rough draft version of the article. I thought it was somehow deleted. Panic mode ensued.
Surprisingly I really enjoyed doing this. I honestly hardly ate anything during the time I was writing this and it was honestly the only thing on my mind for almost a week straight.
Anyways thank you all for reading.
Be Excellent to Eachother!
Edit: There was a mix up on Deadlines name and I fixed it. I also fixed a mix up with an April/May 13th mix up.
Edit 2: User "Nao_o" on Reddit supplied a screenshot of one of the deleted tweets from Damon's Hacked account. Thank you Nao_o.
Edit 3: Found and added two other deleted Damon Wayans tweets. Posted them in the timeline.
Edit 4: I was not able to see a tweet Damon responded to when he first claimed he was shot. The person either allowed me to follow them or stopped their tweets from being private. I updated the "Shot" tweet to include the tweet he responded to.