NBC execs talk about hiring Isaiah Washington...
Well, this is juicy and not something I had seen anywhere until it was linked to AfterElton.com. The Chicago Tribune's Maureen Ryan, on her The Watcher blog, shares some of the questions posed to NBC execs this week during the Television Critics Assn. tour regarding the hiring of controversial Isaiah Washington for at least five episodes of the fall series "Bionic Woman."
The executive producers of "Bionic" were asked if adding Washington to the cast “would show disrespect” to the gay community.
“Absolutely not,” said Jason Smilovic, one of the show’s executive producers. “We embrace the gay community. We are hoping that they are going to watch the show, and we are in no way making any judgments or statements or assignations about what was said or what was done.”
Then after the panel, David Eick, another executive producer, said that the idea to cast Washington came from an NBC executive, who was relaying the request of NBC co-chair Ben Silverman.
Here's the real shock: Eick aid that he wasn’t really sure of what Washington had said or done to cause such an uproar. Hello? T.R. Knight? Gayhab? The Golden Globes? F****t? Ya been hiding under a rock David?
“You guys are going to hate me but I don’t really know what he said,” he said to reporters. “I’m sorry, whenever they’re picking a jury for a high-profile murder case, I never know how they get 12 people who didn’t hear about who did it. But I’m like that guy who didn’t hear about O.J. I knew there was some controversy, [but] honestly, I was so busy, I was trying to finish the ‘Bionic Woman’ pilot, I had another pilot at Fox this year, and ‘Battlestar’ was going, I didn’t know, I don’t know what he did.”
So, they told him what went down which resulted in Washington being fired from "Grey's Anatomy."
“That seems kind of rude and unfortunate and I’m sure he didn’t mean it,” Eick said. "I don’t know the man well enough, I had dinner with him once and thought he was delightful. I’ve seen his work and think he’s an intensely talented actor. I’m sure whatever transpired was a mistake and he feels sorry about it, and that’s not for me to say.”
Then Eick talked about the idea to cast Washington and how it came from Silverman.
“I got an email from [an NBC executive] saying, ‘Would you guys be interested in Isaiah Washington somewhere in your show, Ben Silverman’s been talking about him,’” Eick said. “And I said, I’d seen him as an actor, and I knew we were talking about a character who was going to be this sort of an intimidating force who was going to challenge Jamie in a different way than the other people in her world. I thought, great, it’d be great to get a guy of that caliber for that role, so we set a dinner with him and began pursuing him.”
Eick was told that he’d be repeatedly getting these question for the next few months, and was asked if that would distract from the show: “No. I still abide by the credo that no publicity is bad publicity. And for everyone who doesn’t watch the show because they’re sensitive to the controversy, I figure we’ll get two who will because they’re curious. I just think that’s how it evens out in life, and eventually there will be a new scandal and no one will be thinking about this.”
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Greg Hernandez, Page 2 "News Lite" columnist for the Los Angeles Daily News, gives you a fly-on-the-wall account of the Oscars and other awards show, movie premieres, film festivals and various star-studded events. He also shares his celebrity interviews as well as specially-selected videos and photos. He writes about all things pop culture through a gay man's eyes ...
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GET OVER IT ALREADY!!!!!!....the only ones making a big deal about NBC bringing on Isaiah to their network are those who identify mostly with gay white male culture, let it go, move on and let the man make a living.