Clayne Crawford Alleges Blackmail And ‘A Blatant F***ing Lie’ Before Being Fired From ‘Lethal Weapon’
Clayne Crawford is telling his side of the story about his firing from Fox’s Lethal Weapon series, and it doesn’t show execs in a great light. While he admits making some bad choices about his behavior, he charges that showrunners blackmailed him and have told outright lies about what happened. He shared his perspective on what happened with hosts of the Drinkin Bros podcast Wednesday.
Crawford says that he contacted one of the producers, McG, when the articles about his on-set behavior first came out and pointed to Damon Wayans as the obvious source in his view. McG suggested he contact Warner Brothers and said he would do the same, according to E! Online. When Crawford contacted the head of Warner Brother TV, Peter Roth, it didn’t go as he had hoped it would.
“He said, ‘Clayne, I can’t promise you that I can save your job, but what I can tell you is that you have to make a public announcement apologizing, publicly, to Damon Wayans.’ I was like, ‘What the f***?’ I was like, ‘Peter, why would I apologize publicly because he and I had a riff on set?’ And he’s like, ‘Clayne, that statement alone tells me you don’t want to come back.'”
Clayne Crawford Calls ‘Lethal Weapon’ On-Set Allegations “A Blatant F***ing Lie” https://t.co/2f7IBi8fYY pic.twitter.com/2l3ZsGSt6Z
— Deadline Hollywood (@DEADLINE) August 29, 2018
The actor says he couldn’t bring himself to apologize to Wayans because he had “made life miserable” while he was on the show. He also said that he had a feeling that the wheels had already been set in motion to fire him from Lethal Weapon and didn’t want to give them ammunition to use against him by apologizing. Crawford says he was also afraid because he knew that audio of him yelling at Wayans existed, in fact, he says the studio had been blackmailing him with that audio, threatening to release it whenever he and Wayans had an argument, which it seems was fairly often.
Crawford says he found Wayans difficult to work with because he wouldn’t do table reads with the rest of the cast so he never knew what to expect once they were on the set, and it caused delays in shooting schedules. He also says that he felt Wayans made unreasonable requests and offered one experience as an example. There was a scene that needed to be shot in a church. Us Weekly reports that Wayans showed up to shoot the scene but then said that his religion, Jehovah’s Witness, prohibited him from entering the building. The actor completely denies one allegation that’s been widely reported. He calls allegations that he yelled at or in front of children “a blatant f***ing lie.”
Clayne Crawford admits that he didn’t handle things the way he should have.
“I snapped. Should I have gone to my trailer? 100 percent. Should I have just gone and waited? That’s what I was instructed to do when there was a problem — you go sit in your trailer and you lock your door and you take a nap. Hollywood is very sensitive, so I should not have screamed and yelled, right, because it’s a bunch of very delicate flowers out there.”
He also said that he didn’t expect they would fire him because of the importance of his role to the show.
Clearly still upset by how things played out, Crawford says Warner Brothers has yet to reach out to him and that he didn’t even know he had been fired until he saw it on social media. He says he sent emails and left messages but received no response from anyone. He says he has no plans to watch anything on Fox networks anytime soon, not even Thursday Night Football.
