Nathan Fillion says he would work with Joss Whedon again “in a second”
Fillion previously worked with Firefly, Much Ado About Nothing, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, and Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Aux News Joss Whedon
Brave white man Nathan Fillion has come forward to say that he would work again with fellow man Joss Whedon “in a second.” However, he’d probably love any work that does not involve playing a rookie cop in 2022….
“I mean, listen by his own admission that guy’s a work in progress and I appreciate that… I would work with Joss again in a second. I would work with him again in a second,” Fillion says during an episode of the Inside Of You podcast as reported by Variety.
Fillion most famously led Whedon’s space Western show Firefly as Captain Malcolm ‘Mal’ Reynolds. When the show was cancelled after one season, Fillion went on to star in the spin-off film Serenity. He also worked with Whedon on Much Ado About Nothing, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, and appeared in the seventh season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer as the terrifyingly misogynistic preacher named Caleb.
Aligning himself with the infamous director, Fillion says he didn’t witness Whedon engaging in any on-set abuse during their time working together. “I read that article, and nowhere in there at any point in time did he mention Firefly. I had an entirely—that was not my experience with that man,” Fillion says. On the podcast he describes Whedon as “funny, self-deprecating, incredibly talented” and “maybe a little haunted.”
Of course, two of Whedon’s most outspoken critics/accusers are Buffy and Angel’s Charisma Carpenter and Justice League’s Ray Fisher so, Fillion—who isn’t a woman nor a person of color— was presumably exposed to a different side of Whedon.
Fillion references the profile published in New York Magazine earlier this year, in which Whedon defends himself from the long list of accusations against him concerning his behavior on set, dating all the way back to the Buffy days.
Some of the accusations against Whedon include Fisher describing his on-set behavior as “gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable.” And Carpenter later detailed the alleged emotional abuse she endured at the hands of Whedon centering around her pregnancy during the third season of Angel.
Justice League’s Gal Gadot also shared an alleged incident in which she says Whedon threatened her career. In the New Yorker piece Whedon responded, “I don’t threaten people. Who does that? English is not her first language, and I tend to be annoyingly flowery in my speech.”
160 Comments
Well that’s disappointing.
Yep.
He’s a massive dick
… the hammer is his penis?
Said that did he? Sure is interesting when people say things.
Sometimes they call it “news”.
Sometimes they call it Maurice.
As long as it speaks for the poutine of love.
Pompatus. No gravy.
NEVER!
I know what poutine is and I love it. Only speak from there!
Little known fact, but Pompatus was a Roman consul in 182 BCE.
the whole thread has curdled
Wowww WOWWWWww
https://www.theonion.com/kidnapped-journalist-forced-to-explain-to-isis-captors-1819579374
Man States Opinion, Is Sighed At By Online Strangers
Over the years, it’s become very clear that the quick cancellation is the best thing that could have happened to Firefly. That cast’s bond now gets to exist forever as it first was without the inevitable toxicity that even crept into Dollhouse in just a slightly longer run, plus it didn’t sink to the same depths as the latter seasons of Buffy and Angel.
Never had the chance to jump the shark.
It was going to though. That reunion some years ago revealed a season two episode would’ve had the terrible Mal’s sexist mocking of Inara “arc” resolved with Inara being gang-raped by reavers and only after that does he treat her like a human being.
I want to say I’m surprised but that IS the kind of writing I’ve come to expect from middle-aged white men in those kinds of fictional settings sadly. Jesus.
Oh my god…I thought the idea of that as a plot point was a joke made by the voice over guy from Honest Trailers.
Those aren’t very deep depths though? Season 7 of Buffy is probably the weakest but it’s still head and shoulders above the vast majority of scripted tv at the time or now
Kept people from having time to think about how the reavers could possibly manage doing maintenance on a spaceship.
I maintain that Buffy and Angel’s worst seasons were still better than Firefly. I think people love the concept and ideal of Firefly they have in their minds, but what’s onscreen is mostly mediocre.
once again i am baffled as to why someone chose to say something when they had the absolutely freedom to just say nothing
So apparently Nathan was asked a question about Joss, and he answered it. Why is that confusing?
“It’s a complicated question. I had a good working relationship with him, but it seems a lot of people didn’t. It’s not in the cards now so probably best to move one.” You can answer without effusively saying how much you’d work with someone.
“Nathan Fillon Confirms Joss Whedon Woman Hating Sex Pest He Would Never Work With Again”Would be the headline if he answered like that. If he would work with Whedon again, why should he lie?
Or again as I said elsewhere, he tells the interviewer ahead of time that he doesn’t want to discuss Joss Whedon, something celebs do all the time, and not have any headline.
Or he can just be honest. Joss is his friend.
It’s not even unfair of him to answer like he did. He had a good experience working with Whedon, as best I can tell everyone else on Firefly did. Relying on his own experiences and the experiences of people he knows over the reported experiences of people he does not know is a completely reasonable thing to do.
You can do that without throwing other people who have had bad experiences under the bus
And you could kill yourself
throwing other people who have had bad experiences under the bus{citation needed}
People will ask those pesky things called “questions.”
Yeah and celebrities never refuse to answer questions.
I, too, wonder why interviewees for podcasts don’t just sit there mute the entire time.
Arguably, some podcasts would be vastly improved by that practice.
That’s a fair point.
I think the same about you
Well of course Whedon’s not going to unprofessionally abuse someone who looks like they might actually smack a bitch. That’s usually how bullies work.
“Fillion—who isn’t a woman nor a person of color— was presumably exposed to a different side of Whedon”Or he’s okay with the only side Whedon has? Or, not prepared and expecting to be offended and victimize ahead if time, he didn’t find Whedon’s on set behaviour to be either offensive or abusive?
That quote is from the author of the piece, not Fillion.
How about the behavior on the Rookie that he has also handwaved away: https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2019/08/04/the-rookie-afton-williamson-quits-alleges-sexual-assault-racism/1915804001/
Yeah, my first thought was about the actress who left The Rookie because of harassment. He’s clearly OK looking away from toxic stuff as long as it doesn’t affect him.
“Or, not prepared and expecting to be offended and victimize ahead if time”
Were Charisma Carpenter and Michelle Trachtenberg prepared for and expecting to be offended when they started in 1997 and 2000 respectively?
Like, what the FUCK are you even talking about?
This isn’t surprising.Now, if you tell me one of the women that received the brunt of his abuse was like, I spoke with Joss a lot during Covid about his wrongdoings in the past and being better in the future. And, I’d work with him again in order to call him out if he hasn’t changed.That would surprise me.
Yeah and your opinion matters
Not surprised Fillion said it, but I’m disappointed he did. I’m also not at all surprised he had a positive working relationship with Whedon, given that a) Whedon (presumably) had no interest in fucking him, and b) he’s incapable of getting pregnant and thus committing the cardinal sin of forcing writers to readjust their plotlines. As usual, I wish we had a better sense of just how many lines Whedon crossed. Some of his behavior—like threatening to end Gadot’s career—comes across as “asshole abusive boss”—whereas other incidents—like how he supposedly wasn’t allowed to be left alone with an underage Michelle Trachtenberg—is more “uh, wait, should he be criminally prosecuted?” It’s all bad, and obviously people have a right to speak up when and however they please, but so much of the issue remains maddeningly non-specific.
Or maybe he’s just a bully, and it wasn’t about being a sexual predator. In which case this is all we’re gonna get. Not every asshole is a monster.
Maybe! And if that’s the case I’d like to know.
Using your power to threaten to end a woman’s acting career is pretty monstrous
especially when you can watch any of her performances and realize she’ll eventually get there on her own, at least in the case of Gadot, who is not a good actress.
I love how when it comes to shitty men, we still have to make it about something the woman’s doing wrong.
I didn’t say she’s doing anything wrong. Just that she’s a terrible actress. It’s not like she’s alone in that. Or alone in being shit on by terrible men in positions of power. No one should have to put up with that kind of behavior at work, no matter what your job is.
Her acting skills are completely irrelevant to this conversation.
Tgat never happened. Gadot is a drama queen.
Your proof, Joss?
Yeah, but every asshole is full of shit.I don’t actually know if this applies to the discussion. I just thought it sounded cool. I probably stole it subconsciously though. Have a nice weekend!
I’m not sure that’s where Whedon drew the line in terms of who to treat well and who to treat badly. One of his favorites, after all, was Alyson Hannigan, a) whom Joss pretty obviously would’ve liked to fuck if she’d have him, and b) who reportedly was allowed to tank Joss’s original plans for season 6 of Buffy by refusing to play Dark Willow for a full season, and he responded not by hating her for it but by pretending that was his plan all along (“Life is the Big Bad!”).The sense I get that the ugliness was more about Joss setting up a petty rivalry between the cool art kids like him and Hannigan, who wanted to do Important Work and then perform Shakespeare together in their spare time, and the workaday actors like Gellar or Carpenter, who just wanted to do their jobs professionally and then go home and live their lives. And the reason why Firefly was an atypically harmonious Whedon set is because, at least for the small time it was on the air, basically the whole cast was in the “cool art kids” camp.
Has Gellar said anything negative about him?
Only obliquely, as far as I know: “While I am proud to have my name associated with Buffy Summers, I don’t want to be forever associated with the name Joss Whedon. . . . I stand with all survivors of abuse and am proud of them for speaking out.”
Geller openly supported Carpenter’s stance against Whedon and claimed that she no longer wanted her name associated with his.
Whedon wanted her to play Dark from the beginning of the season? Good thing he listened to her.
Not exactly. I believe the first part of season 6 went off as intended, but it was meant to lead to Willow going dark by around the time of “Smashed”/“Wrecked.” At basically the last possible moment, they chickened out and came up with the idiotic “magic is drugs!” metaphor to delay Willow’s turn till the very end of the season.
I wonder how much clout Alyson had as well. I say that with all due respect, but you see that Gal Gadot was also able to put her foot down. Alyson was riding the American Pie 1 & 2 train in 2001. There’s a possibility the network also suspected that Alyson might attempt to walk if she really didn’t want to do it. I believe contracts were renegotiated post-Season 5 when they switched networks, and that’s also how she got the “And…” credit in the opening credits.
It’s definitely possible that Hannigan went over Joss’s head, but even if she did, it’s still interesting that his response wasn’t to throw a public snit about how she’d ruined his vision—as he did when Charisma Carpenter got pregnant and when Amber Benson refused to return as Tara in season 7—but just to quickly and quietly overhaul the entire season and pretend like everything was still going exactly to plan.
I don’t even know that she went over his head necessarily, but there were known contract negotiations at the end of 5 and at the time, Alyson was in the best position so it’s possible that she was like “I want the and credit and I don’t want to play evil or I’m done” (albeit she seems nicer and may not have said it that bluntly). I think what I’m trying to say is that people who have more power than he does in a situation get his respect possibly by default. 2001 Alyson Hannigan had more clout and power than he did. If it had been any other cast member, it might have been different.
The trouble with that scenario is that, by all accounts, season 6 was well underway when the show put the brakes on the Dark Willow storyline. (That’s why they had to awkwardly segue from the setup for that arc into the Crack Magic storyline instead of just doing something else entirely.) Hannigan’s contract would’ve been signed, sealed, and delivered by the time that decision was made.In fact, you can see evidence of the writers’ plans even in that very “And” credit Hannigan negotiated. For the first time, the accompanying visuals don’t just show Willow looking cute or sad-eyed or wafting spells, but Willow furious and black-eyed and telekinetically hurling knives.
According to Amber Benson, prior to Season 6, she was told Tara would be dying at the beginning then at the start of production, she was told it was pushed and then told it was pushed again. That would account for it being partly down to the terms of Hannigan’s contract. She may well have had a get out clause and may have suggested she would use it. But also it’s just the reality that there is no doubt – and was no doubt in 2001 – that Alyson Hannigan had the most clout on the show at the time. It may be a case as simple as her saying “hey I really don’t want to do that” and Joss knowing that he had to placate her for that reason.
Yeah I think it’s important to realize that not all instances of unacceptable behavior are the same, and I think your “cool (nerdy) kids” vs everyone else analysis rings true. As much as race and sex may have played in Whedon’s actions (and I believe they did), I think pettiness and “thin-skinned guy who eventually got a lot of power” were the main motivators.
Man, it would be really fun to speculate about your life based on few facts. We should give a try! Tell me your worst day and I’ll define your entire existence based on that!
“One of his favorites, after all, was Alyson Hannigan, a) whom Joss pretty obviously would’ve liked to fuck if she’d have him, and b) who reportedly was allowed to tank Joss’s original plans for season 6 of Buffy by refusing to play Dark Willow for a full season, and he responded not by hating her for it but by pretending that was his plan all along (“Life is the Big Bad!”). Cite your source for that particularly salacious rumor. Please
Fillion was a bully to Stana Katic. Not surprising.
Oh, well, now that I know THAT, despite Firefly and a little Rookie, he is my sworn enemy.
What I heard was that the rift between Fillion and Katic was because she bullied the crew on set. We’ll probably never know the real truth because all we’ve heard is rumors. The most prevalent rumor I heard was that she was abusive to crew.
It’s my understanding that Stana was…let’s just say less than pleasant and professional with the crew.
This is a nonsense lie. Every rumor out of that dhow said she was a diva, and Fillion was an Everyman.
Yeah, the MT thing is the most worrisome.
Not for nothing, but I don’t believe there is a set on any production where an adult is allowed to be alone with a child.
It’s all bad, and obviously people have a right to speak up when and
however they please, but so much of the issue remains maddeningly
non-specific.I’m gonna go slightly harder
than you are on this, and probably get crucified for it, but here goes: the more I look into this particular
cancellation, the more ambivalent I feel about it.
To be clear – based on what Whedon’s said, and his interview, I think that at absolute minimum he’s a pretentious, egotistical douche who needs to check himself. He’s also almost certainly
done some unprofessional shit that warrants himself a severe reprimand
from HR about how to conduct himself around his employees. But it does
bother me that he’s being cancelled based on what is almost entirely
insinuation and framing.
When Fisher finally, after a year of hyping his own allegations up, came out with what happened, he couldn’t cite a single instance
of abuse at Whedon’s hands, let alone racist abuse. His allegations are
literally: ‘He wouldn’t listen to my notes,’ and that’s it.
The
meaning of Trachtenberg’s post could be anything from ‘He was in a bad
temper one day and yelled at me,’ to ‘He sexually assaulted me.’ Neither
is okay, but one is significantly worse than the other.
Whedon
responded to Gadot’s allegations with a specific quote that he recalls
saying to her. Gadot responded that she ‘understood him perfectly’ but
gave no further details.Marsden made his allegation in
a decidedly non-allegation-y way, almost as though it was a joke. After
the rest came out, his only reaffirmation was: ‘the Buffy set was not
without challenges.’ This is hardly a damning statement.
Finally,
Carpenter. Carpenter gave the most substantial set of allegations
against Whedon, and what she suffers appears to have been the worst of
the lot. But… even with what she said, there is a lot that’s missing.
All of her allegations lack either context or specificity or both. She
includes only a single quotation from Whedon: “going to keep it.” I
looked this up just now, because I was about to open my response to you
with: ‘What happened to Carpenter was worthy of cancellation alone,
but…’ And then when I checked, I realized it actually wasn’t that much clearer there either.All
the other people who’ve worked with him have either praised the
experience (like Fillon) or given exceedingly nebulous statements about
the whole thing (Boreanz, Gellar, Acker) that boil down to a generic
statement about ‘supporting victims of abuse’ without corroborating any
of the allegations or accounts of Whedon’s behavior.
If
what Carpenter says about Whedon is true, and she’s at all accurate in
how
she’s framed it, he absolutely deserves what he’s got. And I’m not
accusing any of them of lying, or bending the truth about Whedon (except
maybe Fisher). It is unlikely, verging on implausible, that Whedon is
spotless at this point, when this many people have said things about him. But I’m not okay with the fact that there is not a single instance of anyone just laying out the facts in a sequence,
saying: ‘this is what he did, these were the circumstances, this is how it happened.’
The tricky thing is that, as far as we know, the issue was the general atmosphere of favoritism, backbiting, and disrespect, rather than any big instances of bright-line harassment or criminality. If Joss was kind of manipulative shit to you on a low but persistent level, you can either just say “He was always kind of an asshole to me” and be accused of being vague, or say “Here’s one example of him being an asshole to me” and be accused of blowing that one little thing out of proportion.For what it’s worth, I had a third-hand connection to someone who worked on Buffy at a pretty high level, so I’m given to understand that the general atmosphere on that show was even more poisonous than is widely known. Like, “Joss stoked resentment between two of the actors until they ended up screaming the c-word at each other and refusing to work together” bad.
I get what you’re saying about the general atmosphere, but I disagree with the overall takeaway.First of all – if what you’re saying is true, then Trachtenberg’s post is inexcusable. As a grown woman, she should know what her post implies, and to deliberately psyche people out like that over a lesser offense is a pretty despicable, honestly.
Second – Carpenter’s post about Whedon did delve into specific instances, it’s just that there wasn’t a lot of detail surrounding those. Like, she alleges that he referred to her as ‘fat’ when pregnant and asked her if she was going to keep it, and she posits both of these as being done in a vindictive, passive aggressive way. I can 100% accept that both of these could be considered inappropriate no matter what the circumstances were, but it’s a little hard to tell if her framing of them is correct without more surrounding information. There’s other stuff she talks about like mocking her for a tattoo and threatening to fire her, and it does seem like she could add context to all of that. It might take a long-form article/interview or a longer public statement, but it could be done.
you can either just say “He was always kind of an asshole to me” and be
accused of being vague, or say “Here’s one example of him being an
asshole to me” and be accused of blowing that one little thing out of
proportion.I think even for the stuff that is a bit harder to pin down, there’s a way to frame this in your allegations. I’ve absolutely met people who’ve been low-level shitty before, so I can believe that, but I think you’ve then got to acknowledge that what you’re alleging isn’t big, clear capital-A abuse but rather smaller instances of manipulation and passive aggressiveness etc. I think people are capable of understanding the cumulative effect a lot of low-level assholery would have over time; it would only be a problem if Carpenter frames them as one-off instances. Give a few examples, reiterate that this happened a lot, link them to all the other examples.
The descriptions in the Shapiro article of how he treated three of his much younger girlfriends and his insistence that he really couldn’t help himself from sleeping with his employees on the Buffy set are enough to make him dead to me. He comes across as having lots in common with Angelus and the trio.
The part about Fisher you forgot to mention is that Warner’s did an in-house investigation and “addressed it.” And about ten seconds later Whedon was fired from his own show on HBO, The Nevers. Yeah there was definitely something to Ray Fisher’s allegations.
Whedon left The Nevers after Fisher and Momoa had both come out against him, after he’d been seen to about Gadot, and everyone was beginning to scrutinize previous allegations from Carpenter and Marsden. His reputation was beginning to tank and I’m sure they presumed that more was gonna come out.
Fisher, after hyping the allegations for months, released a supposedly tell-all interview in the Hollywood Reporter in which he did not substantiate anything, nor did he allude to any unmentioned allegations. If Fisher had said what had actually happened I’d probably have believed him, but why the hell would he not have? You don’t go on the attack like that and then bury your strongest claim.
It’s cute that you think Whedon voluntarily left The Nevers.
I used the same wording used in the press release. IDC if he was fired or forced out or pressured to leave or left of his own accord, it doesn’t change my assessment of Fisher’s allegations.
Sure, except those weren’t the order of events and his dismissal from that show had zero to do with the investigation they did. But carry on…
Yeah, there was the Gal Gadot thing. Which was handled on set at the time, and then, once Fisher basically appropriated the Gadot incident into his Justice League complaint (and there’s no indication that he got Gadot’s consent to put that laundry out in public) had to be handled again by jettisoning Whedon from The Nevers. That was a pretty low-stakes decision for WB, because Justice League was a flop, and the only thing of value Whedon had left was the fan goodwill from his Buffy/Angel/Firefly heyday. Once that was gone, once putting Whedon’s name on a project was no longer a positive, what use was he?
Lol whedon will absolutely direct more successful endeavors.
I hope so, but I doubt it. Beyond the accusations, Whedon’s never been shy about criticizing other creatives and studios he’s worked with, from the guys who directed the Buffy Movie and Alien Resurrection straight through Marvel after Ultron. Studios might put up with that if you have a large and dedicated fanbase or are producing a string of hits, but at this point he doesn’t and that’s a decent bit behind him. He might not have enough friends left in the industry to survive this. Can you see Marvel bringing him back to direct anything? WB? Where is his next succesful endeavor going to come from?
No, Joss stepped away from nevers and wb immediately.
He’s also admitted to sleeping with young women hoping to get cast on the show while he was still married. Amber Benson has also stated that the set was toxic because of Whedon, and Sophia Crawford and Jeff Pruitt have said both that he threatened their careers and said that Crawford could only stay on the show if she broke up with Pruitt. Between them, Carpenter, and Gadot, that’s at least four people who have suggested that he’s vindictive and/or controlling of his female employees’ private lives. If all of the women who have displeased you have similar stories of personal and professional threats, I don’t think “well, they weren’t nakedly explicit” is much of a defense.
While it’s possible to nitpick the circumstances and phrasing of each incident — it’s pretty rare that even the most heinous of assholes will just outright say they’re going to fire you for an illegal reason — it all adds up to a pretty clear pattern of intimidation and abuse of power. On top of that, his reputation was substantially built on a sort of pop feminism girl power that his personal life clearly betrays. It really shouldn’t be that surprising that he lost that audience, at one time his core fanbase, when it came out that the whole thing was a put on. It’s fine to say, hey, he’s not Weinstein, which is true, but I also don’t think it’s the worst thing in the world if just being a “pretentious, egotistical douche” makes it harder to get work? It seems to me that the most likely explanation for why Whedon is the way he is is that he’s coming from this shitty auteur tradition that says that all geniuses are tortured and it’s fine to be an abusive dickhead as long as you’re doing it in the name of art. That idea has metastasized primarily because historically, there have been no real consequences for it.
Honestly, there are only a couple parts of your post that I
disagree with, but for the most part, yeah. Maybe I was a little bit
too soft in my original comment: I think Whedon’s almost definitely done
something, and that something is probably pretty bad. I don’t
believe there’s gonna be all this smoke without at least some fire. I
actually just now came across another instance of a writer referring to
him as casually cruel and bragging about making screenwriters cry. I
hadn’t heard of this before but, if true, it’s certain more wood for the
fire.I
disagree that it’s nitpicking, though. I’d refer you to my reply to Inspector
Hammer above: I don’t think it’s right for someone to say: ‘He’s guilty
of X, therefore he might as well be guilty of Y and Z,’ when we don’t
even know what X actually is. You mention Sophia
Crawford and Jeff Pruitt – that’s another case of an allegation being
made in a pretty vague (and, in this case, incredibly strange) way.‘Harder to get work’ is one thing – but it’s an understatement, as I’m sure you’re aware. Whedon’s life is going to be affected by these allegations in ways that more or may not be deserved. This article, for instance, is impugning one of his non-disgruntled employees for supporting him, and basically calling him and Whedon racist. A lot of people are going to think he’s a rapist, based on Trachtenberg’s tweet. Maybe he deserves those labels, but we don’t know because no-one’s actually said what he’s done. I don’t think you can just dismiss those things on the grounds that he’s been an asshole in other ways.
A large part of the Pruitt/Whedon blowup played out live in front of a global audience on the buffy.com linear board back when the end of Season 4 aired. I know because I was there watching it happen from Australia.
A large part of the Pruitt/Whedon blowup played out live in front of a global audience on the buffy.com linear board back when the end of Season 4 aired. I know because I was there watching it happen from Australia.
Pretty much if Amber Benson says Joss was a dick I believe it. She is one of the most empathetic, kindest people I’ve ever met. It makes me very mad he could have taken advantage of her or anyone else for that matter. I used to very much look up to him as an example of a reasonable male role model.
I was a participant on the linear board at buffy.com 20 or so years back. Jeff Pruitt used to participate on it to talk about the show and especially stunts. Joss too at other times.Then Jeff was there after he got fired and during that time time Joss turned up. Things got pretty wild! It was the evening in Australia and I was following things for a while in an Internet cafe but I did later hear of people in the US taking a day off work specifically just to watch it all play out in real time.
Regarding the first part, being an adulterer, I will point out that avclub’s sister site, Jezebel, is perfectly ok with adultery when women do it.
I think a lot of the…I guess controversy…around Whedon’s #cancellation is that he’s basically getting the same treatment as a sexual harasser, but everything he’s been accused of is more just general bad boss stuff. On the one hand, it’s probably easier for the average person to relate to having a boss that displays clear favoritism and can be volatile with employees who aren’t in the favored group. On the other hand, that kind of thing is fairly common and something that most people have to deal with at one point or another in their working lives.And it getting the same sort of response as something that’s generally held to be much worse just kind of rubs a lot of people as wrong, even if when we think about it we’d really like it if there were tangible consequences like this for the jerk manager who treats a couple of people in the office like the sun shines just for them while taking pleasure in coming up with creative put-downs for their coworkers.
Completely true, agree with everything you said here, yeah.
For me personally, I think it comes down to a couple of things: Firstly, just on principle, I think it really is problematic to cancel someone before even having an accurate picture of what they actually did. It’s not even a matter of credibility, I’d probably believe whatever his accusers have to say at this point, but it’s about knowing what went down and judging it accordingly.Secondly, it’s this practice of chaining together sins. ‘Whedon’s a bully, therefore he’s racist and a sexual assaulter.’ I don’t think it’s right to do that, even when that person’s a total prick. Stealing a car doesn’t make you a murderer.
I think part of why people do that is because it’s just kinda one of those human nature things to love being righteously angry. We seek out news articles that we know will induce outrage in us. And sometimes, we’ll try to make the crime fit the outrage. If berating underlings and making a teenager cry aren’t outrageous enough then we’ll go ‘Well maybe he’s racist, maybe he’s a sexual harasser….some of these stories can be interpreted to mean that’.
Of course, even if it’s not enough to get us to a real outrage-gasm it’s still the kind of behavior that you’d want people to see getting punished so that future workplace tyrants will hesitate to treat others badly.
Yep, 100% agree.
He admitted to using his position to sleep with younger actresses in exchange for favors. A WB exec got fired a while back for doing the exact same thing. That this behavior is fairly common is not an excuse, nor does it make the response an overreaction. You think what Cosby and Weinstein did was unusual for men of their status? And that’s not even getting into the fact that Whedon spent decades promoting himself as a male feminist ally, so having these skeletons in the closet makes him a massive hypocrite on top of being an unprofessional, abusive prick.
Lol
The thing you need to understand is that they want people to read between the lines. This is Hollywood where pissing off the wrong person (especially someone powerful and with lots of influence like Whedon) making truthful allegations can get you real life canceled. Not “millionaire won’t get work for awhile but will stay rich” canceled. Your career is legitimately threatened canceled.Of course people are going to give ambiguous statements and sugarcoat their experiences and say enough to put doubt in someone but also keep their careers in tact because again you have to be careful who you piss off. The fact that you’re even here defending this man due to the lack of hardcore evidence or proof in of itself that that it works. Honestly I’m not sure what kind of proof you want from something that happened 20 years ago. If enough people make allegations against someone unprovoked when they have everything to lose, especially someone who helped jumpstart their careers I have every reason to believe them
Yup, this whole thing sounds like spoiled actors upset they weren’t treated like gold 24/7.
I’d like more details on the Trachtenberg thing. It’s terrible either way, but I’d like to get a better sense of the trajectory of his grossness. Was it something sexual? Or was it bullying behavior? I’m not saying one is better or worse, but the latter aligns more with the other on-set claims. If he did the shit he did with Gal Gadot to a fifteen year old, it might have escalated as well to not being allowed to be alone with her.
I don’t think Whedon is a sexual predator, I think he’s definitely an bully asshole who thinks his words are the most important thing than interacting with actual human beings. But he apparently picks his targets to be an asshole towards, he was plugging away at Marvel for like a decade and not a peep (probably because they’re too rich and famous) and the Firefly crew hasn’t said dilly squat. But it seems he picked on lower tier actors and actresses and writers. So he’s an opportunistic bully asshole. Who (consensually, apparently) slept around with actresses because he “had to” like he thinks it’s some Shakesperian tragedy or whatever.
Adults have sex. Get over it. Most men aren’t or don’t want to be monogamous.
Ellen was a bully who was rude to people behind the scenes. Whedon slept with multiple much younger employees on his show, at least once on set in full view of other people. Their ability to consent would be affected by fears that their boss might disfavour them if they said no and there are stories of him being nasty to them in their workplace when affairs ended. Now he claims he really couldn’t help himself, as if he had no agency. He’s not Weinstein but he abused his power.
Yeah you have so much insight into all of this. Everyone is so lucky to be able to hear your opinion on this. Bravo
I honestly don’t care that much that Whedon is a bully and an asshole. I assume that almost all Hollywood bigwigs are, especially directors. I would like to see the industry moving away from that but the fact is that I’ve heard just as bad (or worse) stories about almost every filmmaker out there. On top of that, Carpenter’s and Fisher’s stories don’t add up to much, from what I’ve seen. James Marsters dispelled Carpenter’s assertion that she was fired for being pregnant by admitting that the show was going to get cancelled unless it added Spike, and Marsters used that to get his salary increased (at Carpenter’s expense) while Fisher’s complaints really boil down to Whedon cutting down his screentime in Justice League, his first and probably last chance at stardom.
That said, I cannot forgive Whedon’s fucking of actresses that were directly working for him. I don’t believe a person truly has any agency when their job and career are on the line and even if, as Whedon claims, these women were throwing themselves at him, it was his duty as their boss to say no. As far as I’m concerned, THAT is the betrayal of his liberal, feminist politics.
no one should be fucking anyone who works directly for them. No one who works for someone should be made to feel at all pressured to fuck them or even treat them as anything other than a professional colleague. I have seen these types of relationships develop into something more than once, but in all but one case, they just ended up making literally everyone around them super uncomfortable until they ended. There are a myriad of reasons not to engage who works for you on many levels. Also, in those cases, no one’s career was being held in the palm of some egomaniacal douche’s hand.
James Marsters wasn’t even on set during all crap Charisma Carpenter went through. And who exactly did Marsters hear that information from? Maybe it was producers who went along Whedon?
Adults have sex, at work and an home. Welcome to real life.
Not for nothing, but Fillion’s current show, The Rookie, has also seen some awful behavior, including a lead actress quitting because not enough was done to curtail sexual harassment of her by a recurring guest star: https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2019/08/04/the-rookie-afton-williamson-quits-alleges-sexual-assault-racism/1915804001/
I glanced at the photo and thought that Gronk had dyed his hair.
I never saw Firefly so my only exposure to Fillion was his portrayal of one of the most evil motherf*ckers I’ve ever seen in a series. Yeah, it’s just acting; it seemed disturbingly genuine, though. Can’t bear to look at him after that.
Gonna say what that series was? A comment like that (just detailed enough to spike interest but then not detailed enough to qualm the curiosity) is evil!
He was Caleb, the second-bad, in the final season of Buffy.
Ahh, thank you! Time to youtube! 😀
Presumably Caleb in Buffy?
It was Buffy The Vampire Slayer. The author mentioned it briefly.
Thanks! Youtubed it after dp4m’s reply and yeesh yeah he is creepy in that role D:
“This actor acted too well for me and now I won’t watch him” is a cool normal thing for an adult to say.
I never thought much of Fillion. People’s obsession with him has always confused me. Poor man’s Han Solo.
Poor man’s Han Solo. Lol.
“Yeah, it’s just acting; it seemed disturbingly genuine, though. Can’t bear to look at him after that.”
And my first experiences with Nathan were seeing him in a Fringe theatre event in my (and his) hometown of Edmonton, and seeing him playing a nice guy for a few years on One Life to Live. He also seemed genuine both of those times.
I think he should have known better as to how he worded his answers in this interview, and I am not commenting on the issues that have come up about him on Castle and The Rookie. But by the logic that someone playing an evil character came off as “genuine” should be counted at all about their real life personality and behaviour, surely the fact that they also played nice, sweet, characters and it came off as genuine should count too. (But really, neither should count… I mean even given the times he was living in, Jimmy Stewart was a terrible racist.)
I don’t confuse performances with the actor’s personal lives (which are none of my business). Sorry if that’s how you took a comments that was, essentially, just a subjective impression.
Can’t bear to look at him after that.You wrote this.
Fillion only worked with Whedon for a season so that’s probably why his experience was different. I have no problem imagining someone being cool at first but becoming more toxic as the stress mounts; the most toxic person I ever worked with was pretty cool for years before the little flaws got considerably worse.
Buffy & Angel aired for many years; plenty of time for the bad side of him to reach the surface. As for Justice League, he was asked to completely reshape a huge blockbuster that wasn’t his; he was likely stressed and angry from Day 1.
Not the hill you wanna die on Nate. In fact, it’s not even a hill. More like a hole surrounded on all sides…
He was asked a question, and answered it honestly. Don’t see much of a hill there.
Being a public figure means navigating uncomfortable questions because otherwise they end up getting headlines like this picked up.You can answer a question without ending up looking bad.
I am old enough to remember when there were only a small number of media outlets, and outside of them a palpable contempt emerged for mealy-mouthed non-answers from public figures coupled with praise for authenticity and bracing honesty. I hope to live long enough to see the pendulum swing back a bit, if only because I enjoy living.
How?
“How?”
*ahem*
He could’ve said “No, I don’t think I would.”
You’re an idiot and your opinion doesn’t matter
Aren’t you just some loser grip who lives in LA or something? I would literally kill myself if I were you
Right? Even if he feels this way, why would he say it this way?“My experiences with Joss were very good, so it’s hard to reconcile my recollection of him with other actors’ experiences.” There’s a way to answer this that’s honest and not tone-deaf.
How many actors has Whedon worked over the last two or three decades?
How dare he have a different experience than others!
You’re an idiot, Homer.
Nobody said he couldn’t have a different experience, but hearing the way he’s treated others, saying “who cares, he was nice to me” is a shitty, shitty look.
But hey, abusers are going to defend abusers, right abuser IceHippo73?
Interesting. Now let’s hear what Stana Katic has to say about Fillion.
Afton Williamson might chime in as well.
Is Joss even still working?
There’s a part earlier in the podcast, where Rosenbaum brings up having to kick crew off set for making chauvinistic jokes, and just dealing with bad crew in general, which Fillion mumbles HR. When it comes to actors he says it’s very, very rare that an actor isn’t “gracious,” just to be there regarding his current projects and says, “there’s not much people will do in front of me.” Which comes off as, sure, maybe the set is toxic, but it doesn’t happen in front of me, so that’s somebody else’s responsibility.The Whedon part is really short, just a couple of sentences, where Fillion says that wasn’t his experience. It does solidify that Fillion is an ignorant ass though.
Lol as if what you think means anything. It doesn’t. Continue toiling in quiet desperation though.
“Brave white man Nathan Fillion”Racist.
I’m glad. The pile-on Whedon, which combined credible (if questionable) allegations with non-credible allegations (‘weaponized my faith and femininity?’ come on now — that ‘faith’ part would be a red flag to you all in any other context) was getting to be extreme.
However, he probably love any work…Me think you need copy editor before publish article on big web.
It appears the dude needs to stop hitting the Grecian Formula bottle so much….
AV Club: There is no such thing as cancel culture.Also AV Club: Let’s cancel this guy because he didn’t hate the other guy we cancelled before.
Give Buck is own Halo game, cowards
The entertainment industry gets held to such a weird standard on this site. There are a-holes in every industry. You never hear of someone starving to death because they were too much of a jerk to work with.
“I mean, listen by his own admission that guy’s a work in progress” Joss is 58 years old, how much more time will it take for him to progress to the spot where he learns not to threaten your female star’s career just because she has issues with a sexist joke in the movie?
What do Charisma Carpenter, Ray Fischer, and Gal Gadot have in common? They’re privileged ten out of ten beautiful people that are terrible at delivering nuance in dialog. That means they don’t know how to act. I’m sorry. I refuse to ignore my lying eyes. To me it looks like Joss was mean to people that were bad at their jobs. He was mean to people he was saddled with, that destroyed all his good work because they couldn’t communicate what he wrote effectively. And that fucked with their sense of privilege as beautiful people. God Charisma Carpenter, unless she was delivering a bitchy punchline, was terrible. She was the worst thing in Buffy and Angel unless she was playing a caricature. Every scene she needed to be sincere was broken because of her. Ray Fischer had one note to play as cyborg, and Gal Gadot is just terrible. She’s terrible. She looks like Wonder Woman, but is one of the most wooden actors in existence. I know Joss Whedon may, occasionally be an asshole, but every person condemning him has been at times, an asshole too. So yeah. He sucks a little, but he’s not in a league of his own. He’s not Bill Cosby. He’s not Harvey Weinstein. Most of the people that have worked with him, love him. Scarlet Johansson wanted him to write and direct the Black Widow Movie. Buffy made me a better person. The four people that read this will scoff, but I’m more empathetic and less elitist because of Joss Whedon. I love people more because he walked this Earth. I turn my ability for pattern recognition to his current standing in pop culture, and it raises some alarms. The people that have a problem with him are people that were bad at their jobs. How do you treat your shitty employees?