Last year, Ray Fisher â who played Cyborg in Justice League â tweeted that director Joss Whedon had exhibited âgross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptableâ behavior on set, and that Geoff Johns and John Berg â then the co-chairmen of DC Films â had enabled him. Whedon had been brought on to direct after Zack Snyder left due to a family emergency. There was a long back and forth after that, with the latest turn coming in January when Warner Bros. announced that Fisher would no longer appear in The Flash solo movie as originally planned. Now, Fisher has filled in some of the details in conversation with The Hollywood Reporter.
According to Fisher, the trouble started when Whedon â who had directed the first two Avengers movies â was brought in to replace Snyder. Warner Bros. was unhappy with the returns on Snyderâs last DC film, Superman vs. Batman, which had a very grim tone, and was looking to brighten things up. Whedonâs rewrite involved a lot of changes to the script, one of which was losing a lot of Cyborgâs backstory.
Cyborgâs story in Justice League is pretty intense: he suffers a debilitating accident and has his body augmented. Heâs not a happy camper, which didnât seem to fit the new tone Warner Bros. were going for. Fisher learned from a witness who participated in the later investigation that executives like Johns, Berg and studio chief Toby Emmerich had discussions where they said they couldnât have âan angry Black manâ at the center of the film.
A rep for Geoff Johns also talked to The Hollywood Reporter and framed this discussion a different way, saying the talks were centered around on âadding joy and hopefulness to all six superheroes.â Not that this is particularly relevant, but thatâs probably why the 2017 cut of Justice League has so many more quips and gags than Zack Snyderâs Justice League, aka the Snyder Cut, which came out recently on HBO Max.
But at the time, Fisher didnât know this, but he did find that he had âto explain some of the most basic points of what would be offensive to the Black communityâ to Whedon. He also found his new director very resistant to feedback, whereas before heâd had a more collaborative relationship when it came to developing the character of Cyborg. At one point, Whedon sent an email asking for questions, comments or âfulsome praise,â but it seemed to Fisher he was only interested in that last one. âIt feels like Iâm taking notes right now, and I donât like taking notes from anybody â not even Robert Downey Jr.,â Fisher remembers Whedon telling him when the actor was giving thoughts on how to avoid issues of representation.
Gal Gadot vs Joss Whedon
THRâs sources say that Jason Momoa (Aquaman) and Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman) also clashed with Whedon over lines. Gadot allegedly had âissues about her character being more aggressive than her character in Wonder Woman. She wanted to make the character flow from one movie to the next.â
The biggest clash, sources say, came when Whedon pushed Gadot to record lines she didnât like, and (to use THRâs words) âthreatened to harm Gadotâs career and disparaged Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins.â A witness says that, âJoss was bragging that heâs had it out with Gal. He told her heâs the writer and sheâs going to shut up and say the lines and he can make her look incredibly stupid in this movie.â
Apparently, he lost this one, as Gadot and Jenkins took things to then-Warners chairman Kevin Tsujihara. Speaking about the incident later, Gadot only said that, âI had my issues with [Whedon] and Warner Bros. handled it in a timely manner.â
Anyway, Fisher took his concerns about Whedon to Johns, with Johns ultimately saying that âWe canât make Joss mad.â Johnsâ publicist Howard Bragman denies that, and says that Johns ârecalls suggesting that any creative pitches should happen when Joss Whedon was not preoccupied so he would be most receptive.â Either way, that does sound like it lines up with Fisherâs claims that Johns was protecting Whedon.
Another incident with Johns came when the studio chairman and comic book writer was trying to get Fisher on board with the new movieâs lighter tone, encouraging Fisher to play Cyborg less like Frankenstein and more like Quasimodo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Quoting THR again, âFisher says that in order to demonstrate the look he wanted, Johns dipped his shoulder in what struck Fisher as a servile posture.â
Fisher, who saw Cyborg as a kind of modern-day Frankenstein, did not agree with this direction. âI didnât have any intention of playing him as a jovial, cathedral-cleaning individual,â he said. Once again, Johnsâ spokesperson offered their side of it:Â âGeoff gave a note using a fictional character as an example of a sympathetic man who is unhappy and has an inclination to hide from the world, but one whom the audience roots for because he has a courageous heart.â
Fisher also told Johns Johns that there was a difference between a non-Black person writing a character for a comic and for a Black actor to play that character onscreen. âIt was like he was assuming how Black people would respond rather than taking the advice from the only Black person â as far as I know â with any kind of creative impact on the project,â Fisher said.
Chuck Roven, whoâs been producing DC superhero films since 2005âs Batman Begins, sees both sides of the argument. âI fully empathize with Ray that his character arc ⌠was significantly altered and shortened,â he said. âIâve also collaborated with Geoff over many years and found him to be a gracious and humble man. Geoff took it upon himself to put Cyborg in the Justice League comics in the first place and has written more about the character than any other individual except for the creator. He loves the character Cyborg.â
Booyah-gate
The next big incident came when the producers wanted Cyborg to say the word âBooyah,â which is a catchphrase the character uses on the show Teen Titans. That word wasnât in the script nor is it something Cyborg says in the comics, and Snyder didnât want catchphrases in his version of the movie (although apparently it appeared on some signs as an Easter egg). But with Snyder out, Johns tried to get it back in order to achieve what his rep called âa fun moment of synergy.â
Fisher said he didnât see the word itself as an issue, but thought it played differently in a live-action film than it did in an animated TV series, and was mindful of Black characters in popular culture defined by catchphrases, e.g. Gary Colemanâs âWhatchoo talkinâ âbout, Willis?â from Diffârent Strokes or Jimmie Walkerâs âDy-no-mite!â from Good Times. And no one else in the movie had a catchphrase. âIt seemed weird to have the only Black character say that.â
Nevertheless, Whedon raised the issue again at Johnsâ urging. Fisher says he renewed his objections and thought the issue was dropped. Then Berg took him to dinner and said this, according to Fisher:
"This is one of the most expensive movies Warners has ever made. What if the CEO of AT&T has a son or daughter, and that son or daughter wants Cyborg to say âbooyahâ in the movie and we donât have a take of that? I could lose my job."
Fisher was skeptical that the fate of the movie rested on Cyborg saying âbooyahâ but did ultimately shoot the take.
In the meanwhile, things continued to deteriorate. Fisherâs agents had contacted studio chief Emmerich about Fisherâs issues. Later, Fisher met with Whedon and Johns, who described that move as âjust not cool.â Fisher remembers the meeting like this: â[Johns] said, âI consider us to be friendsâ â which he knew we were not â âand I just donât want you to make a bad name for yourself in the business.'â According to THR, Fisher took that as âa threat.â Johnsâ rep says that Johns did not make a threat but did say that creative differences were not normally taken to the head of a film studio by an actorâs agent.
After that, the movie came out to poor reviews. Fisher moved on with his career, playing Mahershala Aliâs son in True Detective season 3. He also talked with some other people about Geoffâs problematic behavior on other projects, like the Syfy show Krypton. (Johnsâ reps again characterize the stories as misrepresentations.)
The Justice League investigations
Fisher went public with his dissatisfaction with Whedon, Johns and Berg in mid-2020, at which point he talked to new DC Films chairman Walter Hamada. (Johns and Berg had both left, although Johns was still involved in various DC projects.) Fisher says that Hamada âcalled Joss an assholeâ and that he didnât plan on rehiring him. However, Fisher claims he defended Johns. âI donât know Jon Berg very well,â Fisher remembers him saying. âI know Joss was difficult. But Geoff â Ray, heâs really getting dragged through the mud and Iâm sure youâre getting your share of hate, too.â
By this point, Warner Bros. had initiated an internal investigation brought about by Fisherâs complaints. But Fisher was suspicious that an investigation undertaken by the studioâs own HR department would be unbiased, and grew doubly so when some witnesses were telling him they hadnât been contacted. In August of 2020, Warner Bros. approved an outside investigator, but it was one who had worked with the studio before. Fisher was still suspicious, particularly after a high-level source told him not to trust the investigation if a certain, unnamed executive was in charge of it.
Fisher had trouble getting the studio to admit exactly who was heading up the investigation and grew more suspicious. In September, he tweeted again, saying that Hamada had thrown Whedon âunder the busâ and covered for Johns. âUnfortunately, itâs not until I start talking about people specifically that the needle starts to move,â Fisher said. âIf they were going to continue to try to The studio hit cover things up â I wasnât going to let that happen.â
The studio fired back with a statement: âAt no time did Mr. Hamada ever âthrow anyone under the bus,â as Mr. Fisher has falsely claimed, or render any judgments about the Justice League production, in which Mr. Hamada had no involvement.â The studio also said that Fisher had refused âmultipleâ attempts by the investigator to contact him.
Fisher saw this as a smear and calls the statement a âhit piece.â And indeed, WarnerMediaâs top inclusion officer and head of communications Christy Haubegger has said that the studioâs statement that Fisher had refused to cooperate with the investigation was based on âthird-handâ information, although she does âthink they believed what they were saying was true.â
After this, Fisher asked for another investigator. The studio provided Katherine Forrest, a former federal judge. Initially, she was going to work alongside the original outside investigator, but Fisher objected and the original investigator withdrew. Fisher was initially optimistic, in part because Forrest had investigated misconduct by former Warners chairman Kevin Tsujihara, who left the company. But he became wary when Forrest, in THRâs words, âled with the fact that she was an Obama appointee.â
Forrest has since included her investigation, telling THR that in interviews with more than 80 witnesses, she found âno credible support for claims of racial animusâ or racial âinsensitivity.â A WarnerMedia spokesperson says that the company âmade extraordinary effort to accommodate Mr. Fisherâs concerns about the investigation and to ensure its fullness and fairnessâ and has âcomplete confidence in the investigation process and [Forrestâs] conclusions.â
To Fisher, the information Forrest shared publicly fell short. âShe was only authorized by WarnerMedia to attempt to explain away anything to do with race,â he said.
This past February, Fisher tweeted that Hamada was âthe most dangerous kind of enablerâ and had shown that he would âblindly cover for his colleaguesâ and had worked with the studio to âdestroy a Black manâs credibility, and publicly delegitimize a very serious investigation, with lies in the press.â So far as the âliesâ go, Fisher said heâs referring to the statement about Fisher refusing to cooperate with the the original outside investigator.
âI donât believe some of these people are fit for positions of leadership,â said Fisher, whoâs now working on the ABC anthology series Women of the Movement. âI donât want them excommunicated from Hollywood, but I donât think they should be in charge of the hiring and firing of other peopleâŚIf I canât get accountability, at least I can make people aware of who theyâre dealing with.â
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