In her new book Burn It Down, longtime Hollywood reporter Maureen Ryan, who’s currently a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, drops one bombshell after another about the often ugly inner workings of the entertainment industry.
She makes the case that much of Hollywood, even some of our favorite shows, are brimming with racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia — all the bad stuff, you name it. And then lays out ideas for making change.
The book, officially titled Burn It Down: Power, Complicity, and a Call for Change in Hollywood, is loaded with examples of how a TV show or movie that might have appeared to be great on the outside — or maybe not even there — was rife with problems behind the scenes.
Saturday Night Live
Ben, a writer-producer who “grew up idolizing the show,” then ended up working there in the past decade, confirmed that creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels “is God” at the NBC staple: “If you were in his presence, you were either lucky or you had done something wrong.”
Ben said he eventually left, though, because of what he called the show’s “warped way of thinking,” which drove him into “constant fear.” For one thing, he was regularly tasked with things that left him feeling uncomfortable, such as using a fake ID to buy liquor for another employee. He knew of other low-level staffers who purchased illegal drugs for cast members. “That said, being male protected him, to some degree,” Ryan wrote. “He has heard horror stories — involving allegations of harassment and assault — from women he worked with at SNL.“
She cited a May 2022 story from Business Insider, in which a former female intern said that then-cast member Horatio Sanz asked to touch her breasts during a cast party. During another event, around the same time, the story said, another intern alleged that “a high-profile cast member asked her to sit on his lap and licked one of her cheeks.”
There’s also the story of SNL superfan Jane Doe, who met then-cast member Jimmy Fallon at a book signing, when she was 14. She then started a blog for him, with Sanz providing scoops. By the time she was 15, she was accepting invites to cast parties.
She enjoyed it at first. But cut to late 2021, and Doe filed a lawsuit against Sanz, as well as Michaels and NBCUniversal. She alleged that, when she was 17, Sanz had sexually assaulted her at one of the show’s after-parties, per the book, “in full view of a number of SNL employees and cast members.”
Sanz’s attorney did not respond to Ryan’s request for comment, but he’s said elsewhere that Doe’s allegations are “categorically false.”
The Muppets
The adorable characters of Kermit, Fozzie Bear and others have appeared in a long list of TV shows. Ryan noted that the live-action ABC series that aired in primetime from July 2015 to March 2016 — the one where Kermit had a girlfriend named Denise — was anti-Miss Piggy. Co-executive producer Nell Scovell told Ryan that show co-creator and executive producer Bob Kushell had “little respect” for the iconic character, and Scovell faced “a constant battle” in the writers’ room” to protect Miss Piggy. It was an indicator of the misogyny on the set.
Scovell told Ryan that, as just one example, Kushell had come into her office, closed the door and lambasted the fact that someone high up in the crew had been fired for alleged sexual harassment. He didn’t understand the problem. “It wasn’t like he was grabbing tits or ass,” he said, using “gross gestures.” He quieted down when Scovell shared her personal story of assault on a set she’s worked on earlier, but that ended as he left. “He opened his arms and jokingly said, ‘Wanna f***?'” (Kushell reportedly did not respond to Ryan’s request for comment.)
Sleepy Hollow
The 2013-17 series with a diverse cast had big problems when it came to the way it treated race. Ryan noted that, for example, there was an instance where several white men were talking about how to do the hair of lead actress Nicole Beharie, one of the few Black women who have led a network drama. They suggested that straight hair (white hair) is more professional than Black hair.
Ryan observed that Season 2 of the show began to become less progressive in its thinking and more stereotypical: a Black man was portrayed in prison orange, and lead actor Tom Mison’s character of Ichabod Crane became the focal point.
Beharie was dealing with even more behind the scenes. Ryan noted that while both Beharie and Mison had tough adjustments when they took on being a network lead, “Beharie’s behavior was weaponized against her in a way that Mison’s was not.”
For example, Beharie posed for a selfie in an on-set trailer in which she pretended to bite a hairstylist, and it became a rumor on the set and even online that it was a violent interaction rather than a playful interaction. It continued to follow Beharie after her character was killed off at the end of Season 3. Following that, Ryan said, there seemed to be “an apparent campaign to spread damaging information” about the actress, whose career is now on an upswing after a post-Sleepy Hollow lull.
The Goldbergs
Ryan spoke with more than a half-dozen, mostly female former and current employees of the retro sitcom, which premiered in 2013 and concluded in April. “Multiple people told me that, especially in The Goldbergs‘s early seasons, the attrition rate for the show’s few female writers was high, and that, on the show’s soundstages, writers’ room, and elsewhere, unprofessional behavior by [creator Adam F.] Goldberg, star Jeff Garlin, and others was not unusual,” Ryan wrote.
When she asked for comment, “Goldberg’s lawyer said that he ‘never harassed anyone in connection with The Goldbergs,’ that he did not create ‘a difficult and unprofessional climate,’ and that he ‘always created a safe space for women who worked on his programs, treated them with support and respect, and never allowed lewd or inappropriate conduct to occur in the writer’s room.’ Goldberg and his attorney shared emails from four female writers, two of whom worked on The Goldbergs, who spoke of positive experiences working for him.”
Ryan noted that Garlin, who was fired from the show mid-season in 2021, had earlier confirmed to her that he’d been investigated by the show’s HR department three times. (Garlin maintained that he was joking.)
Curb Your Enthusiasm
However, the same actor remains part of the cast for Larry David’s Seinfeld-esque laugher for HBO.
And the author lists allegations that three sources with knowledge of the goings-on on the show have made to her about Garlin: that he “used demeaning, graphic, sexual language in the workplace; that his behavior was investigated by HBO, and those investigations touched on the harassment or mistreatment of people connected to the show.”
She added: “I also heard that Garlin (an actor and executive producer on Curb) requested the names of people who had complained about him, and that it was not unusual for him to behave in an inappropriate, unprofessional, or vindictive fashion.”
While a rep for Garlin did not respond, HBO provided a statement: “Any reports of inappropriate conduct on our productions are investigated fully and addressed. Jeff Garlin remains a cast member and executive producer on Curb Your Enthusiasm and will return for any subsequent season.”
Lost
An excerpt of the book published last week in Vanity Fair alleges that the set of hit ABC drama Lost was toxic in many ways, including racist.
Writers and actors, including Harold Perrineau (Michael), talked to Ryan. He recalled telling a producer that he was concerned the white characters were being elevated and the characters of color were being left by the wayside. The producer’s response was that Locke, Jack, Kate and Sawyer, who were white, were “relatable.”
He also spoke to co-showrunnner Carlton Cuse about how his character didn’t seem to be worried that his son was missing.
“I can’t be another person who doesn’t care about missing Black boys, even in the context of fiction, right?” Perrineau said. “This is just furthering the narrative that nobody cares about Black boys, even Black fathers.”
When the season ended a few weeks later, Perrineau was notified that his character would not be back, and Damon Lindelof later bragged that he had fired Perrineau because he had accused him of being a racist.
Among other issues: the sole Asian American writer who worked for the show was routinely called “Korean” and a woman was randomly asked to take off her top.
Ryan contacted Lindelof, who said he was “shocked and appalled and surprised” by what she had reported for her book. He acknowledged to her that he “failed” to provide “safety and comfort” in the writers’ room. Cuse expressed remorse that anyone had a bad experience on Lost, and he denied knowledge of many specific incidents or comments that Ryan asked about.
Friday Night Lights
Not all of Ryan’s book is bleak. She offered suggestions for improvement and pointed out people and places that have done things right, like beloved NBC drama Friday Night Lights. (Whew!) “The generosity, openness, and undeniable creativity I witnessed on the Friday Night Lights set is how the Hollywood machine works sometimes. Of course, the show hewed to high standards on a lot of fronts. It was famously a set where actors were free to improvise lines and other performance elements, though I would be remiss if I did not note that it had a talented writing staff. The arcs, lines, and architecture the writers provided blended with the actors’ efforts to produce scenes that were perceptive, amusing, and often tremendously moving.”
She has consciously decided “not to dwell on certain unfortunate Season 2 plot developments,” like that bizarre storyline where Jesse Plemons’s Landry commits murder.
Burn It Down is available at bookstores now.
