Last year, Ray Fisher — who played Cyborg in Justice League — tweeted that director Joss Whedon had exhibited “gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable” behavior on set, and that Geoff Johns and John Berg — then the co-chairmen of DC Films — 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 — who had directed the first two Avengers movies — was brought in to replace Snyder. Warner Bros. was unhappy with the returns on Snyder’s last DC film, Superman vs. Batman, which had a very grim tone, and was looking to brighten things up. Whedon’s rewrite involved a lot of changes to the script, one of which was losing a lot of Cyborg’s backstory.
Cyborg’s story in Justice League is pretty intense: he suffers a debilitating accident and has his body augmented. He’s not a happy camper, which didn’t 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 couldn’t have “an angry Black man” 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 “adding joy and hopefulness to all six superheroes.” Not that this is particularly relevant, but that’s probably why the 2017 cut of Justice League has so many more quips and gags than Zack Snyder’s Justice League, aka the Snyder Cut, which came out recently on HBO Max.
But at the time, Fisher didn’t know this, but he did find that he had “to explain some of the most basic points of what would be offensive to the Black community” to Whedon. He also found his new director very resistant to feedback, whereas before he’d 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 “fulsome praise,” but it seemed to Fisher he was only interested in that last one. “It feels like I’m taking notes right now, and I don’t like taking notes from anybody — not even Robert Downey Jr.,” Fisher remembers Whedon telling him when the actor was giving thoughts on how to avoid issues of representation.
Gal Gadot vs Joss Whedon
THR’s sources say that Jason Momoa (Aquaman) and Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman) also clashed with Whedon over lines. Gadot allegedly had “issues 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.”
The biggest clash, sources say, came when Whedon pushed Gadot to record lines she didn’t like, and (to use THR’s words) “threatened to harm Gadot’s career and disparaged Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins.” A witness says that, “Joss was bragging that he’s had it out with Gal. He told her he’s the writer and she’s going to shut up and say the lines and he can make her look incredibly stupid in this movie.”
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, “I had my issues with [Whedon] and Warner Bros. handled it in a timely manner.”
Anyway, Fisher took his concerns about Whedon to Johns, with Johns ultimately saying that “We can’t make Joss mad.” Johns’ publicist Howard Bragman denies that, and says that Johns “recalls suggesting that any creative pitches should happen when Joss Whedon was not preoccupied so he would be most receptive.” Either way, that does sound like it lines up with Fisher’s 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 movie’s lighter tone, encouraging Fisher to play Cyborg less like Frankenstein and more like Quasimodo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Quoting THR again, “Fisher says that in order to demonstrate the look he wanted, Johns dipped his shoulder in what struck Fisher as a servile posture.”
Fisher, who saw Cyborg as a kind of modern-day Frankenstein, did not agree with this direction. “I didn’t have any intention of playing him as a jovial, cathedral-cleaning individual,” he said. Once again, Johns’ spokesperson offered their side of it: “Geoff 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.”
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. “It was like he was assuming how Black people would respond rather than taking the advice from the only Black person — as far as I know — with any kind of creative impact on the project,” Fisher said.
Chuck Roven, who’s been producing DC superhero films since 2005’s Batman Begins, sees both sides of the argument. “I fully empathize with Ray that his character arc … was significantly altered and shortened,” he said. “I’ve 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.”
Booyah-gate
The next big incident came when the producers wanted Cyborg to say the word “Booyah,” which is a catchphrase the character uses on the show Teen Titans. That word wasn’t in the script nor is it something Cyborg says in the comics, and Snyder didn’t 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 “a fun moment of synergy.”
Fisher said he didn’t 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 Coleman’s “Whatchoo talkin’ ’bout, Willis?” from Diff’rent Strokes or Jimmie Walker’s “Dy-no-mite!” from Good Times. And no one else in the movie had a catchphrase. “It seemed weird to have the only Black character say that.”
Nevertheless, Whedon raised the issue again at Johns’ 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 ‘booyah’ in the movie and we don’t have a take of that? I could lose my job."
Fisher was skeptical that the fate of the movie rested on Cyborg saying “booyah” but did ultimately shoot the take.
In the meanwhile, things continued to deteriorate. Fisher’s agents had contacted studio chief Emmerich about Fisher’s issues. Later, Fisher met with Whedon and Johns, who described that move as “just not cool.” Fisher remembers the meeting like this: “[Johns] said, ‘I consider us to be friends’ — which he knew we were not — ‘and I just don’t want you to make a bad name for yourself in the business.'” According to THR, Fisher took that as “a threat.” Johns’ 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 actor’s agent.
After that, the movie came out to poor reviews. Fisher moved on with his career, playing Mahershala Ali’s son in True Detective season 3. He also talked with some other people about Geoff’s problematic behavior on other projects, like the Syfy show Krypton. (Johns’ 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 “called Joss an asshole” and that he didn’t plan on rehiring him. However, Fisher claims he defended Johns. “I don’t know Jon Berg very well,” Fisher remembers him saying. “I know Joss was difficult. But Geoff — Ray, he’s really getting dragged through the mud and I’m sure you’re getting your share of hate, too.”
By this point, Warner Bros. had initiated an internal investigation brought about by Fisher’s complaints. But Fisher was suspicious that an investigation undertaken by the studio’s own HR department would be unbiased, and grew doubly so when some witnesses were telling him they hadn’t 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 “under the bus” and covered for Johns. “Unfortunately, it’s not until I start talking about people specifically that the needle starts to move,” Fisher said. “If they were going to continue to try to The studio hit cover things up — I wasn’t going to let that happen.”
The studio fired back with a statement: “At no time did Mr. Hamada ever ‘throw anyone under the bus,’ as Mr. Fisher has falsely claimed, or render any judgments about the Justice League production, in which Mr. Hamada had no involvement.” The studio also said that Fisher had refused “multiple” attempts by the investigator to contact him.
Fisher saw this as a smear and calls the statement a “hit piece.” And indeed, WarnerMedia’s top inclusion officer and head of communications Christy Haubegger has said that the studio’s statement that Fisher had refused to cooperate with the investigation was based on “third-hand” information, although she does “think they believed what they were saying was true.”
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 THR’s words, “led with the fact that she was an Obama appointee.”
Forrest has since included her investigation, telling THR that in interviews with more than 80 witnesses, she found “no credible support for claims of racial animus” or racial “insensitivity.” A WarnerMedia spokesperson says that the company “made extraordinary effort to accommodate Mr. Fisher’s concerns about the investigation and to ensure its fullness and fairness” and has “complete confidence in the investigation process and [Forrest’s] conclusions.”
To Fisher, the information Forrest shared publicly fell short. “She was only authorized by WarnerMedia to attempt to explain away anything to do with race,” he said.
This past February, Fisher tweeted that Hamada was “the most dangerous kind of enabler” and had shown that he would “blindly cover for his colleagues” and had worked with the studio to “destroy a Black man’s credibility, and publicly delegitimize a very serious investigation, with lies in the press.” So far as the “lies” go, Fisher said he’s referring to the statement about Fisher refusing to cooperate with the the original outside investigator.
“I don’t believe some of these people are fit for positions of leadership,” said Fisher, who’s now working on the ABC anthology series Women of the Movement. “I don’t want them excommunicated from Hollywood, but I don’t think they should be in charge of the hiring and firing of other people…If I can’t get accountability, at least I can make people aware of who they’re dealing with.”
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