Hartley Sawyer Fired from The Flash Over Offensive Tweets

[Trinity]

www.denofgeek.com/tv/hartley-sawyer-fired-from-the-flash/

The Flash may not be back for a long time, due to its pandemic-pushed production schedule, but it now appears that it will do so without a fan-favorite character, Ralph Dibny, a.k.a. Elongated Man, after some recently-unearthed tweets by the actor who portrays him, Hartley Sawyer, retroactively stretched his foot into his mouth.



The CW has officially fired Sawyer from his series regular role on The Flash, reports THR. The move occurs after attention was recently called to the tweets in question, made from 2012 to 2014, which—due to their sheer volume—tick quite the array of offensive boxes, with some racist, misogynistic and all-around sexually-crude attempts at humor. After the tweets resurfaced, Sawyer issued an apology, which he posted on his Instagram, seeing as his Twitter appears to have been—quite understandably—deleted. However, it was apparently not enough for the network.

[Trinity]

Honestly, if this is the new norm. Actors really need to just get off social media for good. As anybody can dig and look into someone''s social media posts before they get hired for a big hit show and get more well known.

Why did nobody do a background check on Hartley when they hired him? And now The CW acts like they never knew. He was on the show for three years, and nobody did a check on his posts before they hired him.

I've seen people attacking other actors on The Flash wanting them fired for a tweet they did over six years ago. I get cancel culture, and everybody should suffer some consequences for their actions. But they can't possibly fire several actors from a show and cancel shows on the spot because of this.

[DC Fanatic]

I get what happened, and those comments are disgusting, so good riddance. But, I'll miss Ralph and his whole story with Sue is now going to just disappear as if it never happened.

I hope they recast Ralph, Ralph can shape shift into people, so they can pretend nothing has changed.

Yeah, they had to have known about this for years, and I'm sure they had to have done and background check before they hired him.

[Trinity]

I agree, I hope they do re-cast, as then that means Sue is going to disappear, they set up a whole story last season for S7, that I hope they re-cast. That isn't fair to the actress playing Sue, to be cut all because of her sexist co-star. And they can't continue the storyline without Ralph.

[Tim]

They'll probably just drop the whole thing. 

Wonder how the writers will handle this?

[Trinity]

I'm very curious. As this isn't the case of a season wrapped up the season with a bow, they cut the season due to the COVID-19, in the middle of a storyline. Hard to just drop it as if it didn't happen.

[Melinda Halliwell]

I read about this yesterday and did a double-take at first of who he was because I don't watch the Flash but then when I remembered him from the Crisis crossover and after reading the tweet thought the show did the right thing proving people need to be careful what they write on social media because that can come back and bite them having an effect as it has here then.

A lot of employers use social media now as part of their background checks on employees in determining if there right for a job as tweets are archived and not deleted after a time of course.

[Squad 51]

Yeah, again I have the feeling that there's some hypocrisy going on, especially with the channels. Sure, the actors should go off with social media, because it can bite them back in the ass years later.

[Tim]

Jun 11, 2020 0:01:04 GMT -5 Trinity said:

I'm very curious. As this isn't the case of a season wrapped up the season with a bow, they cut the season due to the COVID-19, in the middle of a storyline. Hard to just drop it as if it didn't happen.

The same thing happened with Two And A Half Men when CBS canned Charlie Sheen.  They were in the middle of a major storyline (Rose and Charlie getting back together). 

When Mr. Sheen got pink slipped, they had no choice but to drop the whole thing.

[adzpower]

See I'm in two minds on this, on one hand, those tweets were awful, but they were literally YEARS ago, and I have to believe people can change and evolve, heck, I was a different person last week let alone 8 years ago. I don't think its fair to just fire someone when they were clearly a different person back then, what kind of message does that promote? The Flash has time and again worked characters through redemption arcs, Ralph himself being a prime example, but they can't apply that to real life? Seems a tad ironic and hypocritical.

Having said all that, I still think they made the right decision, it would probably have been very uncomfortable on-set when you have black actors working on the show as well as women. In this case, for the good of the entire cast, they made the right call, its just a shame they couldn't work out a way to continue with Hartley given that he is apologetic and clearly not the same person he was 8 years ago.

But if there is any character they can re-cast, its surely the guy who can change his shape.

[Tim]

I know, I mean it wasn't like he was making those tweets NOW (like Rosanne Barr did, that got her canned from her own show). 

Gonna miss him.

[Dark Avenger]

Like if Harley got fired over old tweets what's stopping any other actor getting fired for stuff a decade old they said.

I still don't get how they never background checked this already years ago.

[Tim]

A line needs to be drawn.