Ben Affleck Slavery Scandal Leads To Production Halt
At the moment, you’d think that Ben Affleck would be on top of the world. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is bound to be a box office behemoth, setting Affleck up to most likely star in as many of the superhero blockbusters as he wants down the road, which in turn will only garner – no pun intended – him even more cachet to direct and star in whatever he wants. However, it appears that Ben is having a hard time of it as of late.
First there were the breakup rumors that have been swirling around Ben Affleck and his famous wife Jennifer Garner like a cyclone. Prior to that, an investigation into Affleck’s undue influence on the production of a PBS program entitled Finding Your Roots was launched in response to Affleck allegedly manhandling producers into leaving out some sordid information from the Batman star’s past.
Let’s go back a bit.
Last October, an episode of PBS’s show, Finding Your Roots aired, featuring movie star Ben Affleck. Hosted by Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., Finding Your Roots is a show about just that: tracing a famous person’s lineage as far back as possible to get an idea of where they came from.
According to reports, when Ben Aflleck’s family was examined, there were a few interesting ancestors that popped up – one of which, Affleck wasn’t overly excited about – including a Revolutionary War participant, an occultist, and what turned out to be most troubling for Ben, a slave owner.
When Affleck found out about his long-lost slave-owning relative, Ben turned on the superstar charm to convince the producers to cut the information from the episode.
What followed probably caused Affleck more problems than he would have had if he’d just let them air the segment. After all, even Batman has no control over who his ancestors were three or four generations ago.
Once the information about his slave-owning relative surfaced – as it inevitably would – Ben spoke briefly about what happened on his Facebook site.
“I didn’t want any television show about my family to include a guy who owned slaves.”
Affleck added that he was “embarrassed” about the discovery.
Now, all the hoopla surrounding the Ben Affleck slavery scandal has resulted in a suspension on Finding Your Roots’ third season until “changes in production” can be made. As a result of the internal investigation, PBS released a statement saying that the program’s producers had violated network standards by allowing Ben Affleck to have “improper influence” over the content of Finding Your Roots, and “by failing to inform PBS or WNET of Mr. Affleck’s efforts to affect program content.”
PBS also stated that it has not committed to a fourth season of the show following the Ben Affleck scandal.
[Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images.]
