There's no love lost between Justice League cast members and Joss Whedon. The director who took over the project from Zack Snyder has been accused of racism, threats, and generally being a pain to work with from the likes of Ray Fisher, Gal Gadot, and Ben Affleck. That's not all. Charisma Carpenter and Michelle Trachtenberg also came forward about his alleged bad behavior on the sets of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel. Now, Whedon has broken his silence in a revealing interview.
New York Magazine's profile piece goes into a broad spectrum of allegations against Whedon, ranging from cheating on his former wife to bullying a female screenwriter to the point of crying on the job. He refutes some allegations and makes excuses for others. Was there a rule on the Buffy set that Whedon would not be allowed alone in a room with the 16-year-old Trachtenberg? Not that he recalls. Was he hostile to Carpenter? He admits, "I yelled, and sometimes you had to yell. This was a very young cast, and it was easy for everything to turn into a cocktail party."
He's less vague when it comes to Justice League.
Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot had previously recounted how Whedon had threatened her career when they got into disagreements about his reshoots of Snyder's original project.
Whedon told New York Magazine, "I don’t threaten people. Who does that?" He went on to suggest that maybe his meaning was lost in translation, saying of the Israeli actress, "English is not her first language, and I tend to be annoyingly flowery in my speech."
Reached for comment, Gadot responded, "I understood perfectly."
As for Fisher, the actor cast as Cyborg has accused Whedon of anti-Black racism in the writer/director's approach to the superhero character. On Twitter, Fisher has also described Whedon's behavior toward the cast and crew as "gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable."
Whedon says none of Fisher's claims were "either true or merited discussing." Asked why Fisher might wage such an arduous and public campaign regarding these allegations, Whedon said, "We’re talking about a malevolent force. We’re talking about a bad actor in both senses."
On Twitter, Fisher responded to Whedon's interview with a tweet that reads:
Looks like Joss Whedon got to direct an endgame after all…
Rather than address all of the lies and buffoonery today—I will be celebrating the legacy of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Tomorrow the work continues.
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