Joss Whedon forgot the first rule of the ‘damage control’ interview – just shut up

I used to be well disposed towards Joss Whedon. We attended the same school, albeit at different times, and I enjoyed the various Easter Eggs concealed within his work. The character of Rupert Giles in his most famous show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, was named after one of the school matrons, and the figure of the stern Lord Massen in his recent series The Nevers is a caricature of an especially authoritarian languages teacher we had.

Whedon also seemed a force for good, first in television and then in Hollywood. He was hailed as a man who could simultaneously combine feminist philosophy, genuinely witty jokes and Shakespearean drama in his work. He was that rare thing, a cult figure who crossed over into the mainstream, but without compromise. I liked Whedon, as did millions of others – some fanatically.

These fans have been wondering where he has been, and if he will return to television or film, but a new profile in New York magazine, and the horrified reaction to it, suggests that he is finished. One headline summed up the situation perfectly: “Joss Whedon, Please Stop Talking”.

He may have hoped that a high-profile interview may have reminded his many admirers as to the qualities that they liked about him, and his work. Instead, he has comprehensively destroyed what remained of his reputation, after what has been systematically revealed as a series of bullying, sexually aggressive allegations on Whedon’s part.

Since the debacle of his involvement in rewriting and reshooting the doomed superhero picture Justice League, after its original director Zack Snyder left production, actor after actor came forward to allege Whedon as a sexist, manipulative and misogynistic tyrant, given to arbitrary demonstrations of power with the express intention of humiliating those who worked with, or in some cases for, him. The writer-director was accused to be the worst example of entitled masculine privilege – gaslighting and belittling those he worked with.

Whedon’s career – which had already been lightly tainted with fans calling the infertility storyline he gave Scarlett Johansson in Age of Ultron misogynistic – was blown up by the accusations. After Ray Fisher, who played Cyborg in Justice League, directly accused him of racially-aggravated bullying, the studio announced in late 2020 that “remedial action” would be taken. It may not be a coincidence that immediately afterwards he “stepped down” as showrunner of The Nevers, citing exhaustion. So far only half the show has been broadcast, with Philippa Goslett taking over as screenwriter for the remaining episodes, for the unenviable task of developing Whedon’s universe with no direct involvement from the show’s creator.

Few have any sympathy for him. If he never works again – and it looks exceptionally unlikely that Hollywood will allow him to – then he will still be wealthy beyond most writers’ wildest dreams. But the allegations of his hideously entitled and predatory behaviour have significantly damaged the legacy of the projects that made his name. It is hard now to think of Buffy and not remember the detail that he allegedly informed its star Charisma Carpenter that she was fat, and to ask her, when she was pregnant, if she was planning on keeping her baby. But Whedon is not content to fade into the background. So he has given his first post-downfall interview to New York magazine. It has not gone well.

Whedon begins the piece saying he is “terrified of every word that comes out of my mouth”, before proceeding to demonstrate to his interviewer Lila Shapiro why his initial reluctance to give the interview was justified.

Even as he denies specific accusations, such as his not being allowed to be alone with the 16-year old Buffy actress Michelle Trachtenberg and claiming that he was “never physical with people”, Whedon paints himself as an autocratic and dictatorial figure. He defends his “uncivilised” behaviour on the set of Buffy by saying: “I was young. 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 shared some regrets around how he spoke to Carpenter after learning she was pregnant. “I was not mannerly,” he said. But he refuted her claims. “Most of my experiences with Charisma were delightful and charming. She struggled sometimes with her lines, but nobody could hit a punch line harder than her.” When the interviewer asked if he had called her fat when she was pregnant, he replied: “I did not call her fat. Of course I didn’t.”

When confronted with Fisher’s accusations of racism, Shapiro writes “Whedon insists he spent hours discussing the changes with Fisher and that their conversations were friendly and respectful.”

As one of his collaborators acknowledges, Whedon is a complex and contradictory figure, a strange mixture of English public schoolboy and American pop culture vulture. “His tone is deflecting, it’s funny, it’s got wordplay, rhyme, quote marks, some mumbles, self-deprecation, a comic-book allusion, a Sondheim allusion, and some words they only use in England. This means you, the recipient, have to do some decoding.”

On other occasions, however, no indulgence can be levelled towards him. One of the most damning sections of the interview comes when Whedon is asked about his much-publicised affairs with various colleagues on the Buffy set, and he replies that, while he feels “f______ terrible” about them, Shapiro notes that “he quickly added that he had felt he ‘had’ to sleep with them, that he was ‘powerless’ to resist… I’m not actually joking,” he said. He had been surrounded by beautiful young women — the sort of women who had ignored him when he was younger — and he feared if he didn’t have sex with them, he would “always regret it.” This is backed up with interviews with much younger women who feel exploited and used by him in various short-lived relationships. Whedon’s response was to quote Richard III, who he explicitly compared himself to, specifically the lines:

Like Shakespeare’s hunchbacked monarch, the writer-director remains a vindictive figure. Whedon is unable to let old scores from the Justice League set go; he refers to his nemesis Fisher as “a malevolent force… a bad actor in both senses” and, when asked about Gal Gadot’s claims that he had threatened her with ending her career, responded: “I don’t threaten people. Who does that?...English is not her first language, and I tend to be annoyingly flowery in my speech.”

It was probably not an excellent idea to hint that much of the discord thrown up by the Justice League fiasco was sown by obsessive Snyder super-fans, any more than it was wise for Whedon to conclude, reflecting on the upset and controversy, that people had been using “every weaponizable word of the modern era to make it seem like I was an abusive monster.” Instead, he told Shapiro: “I think I’m one of the nicer showrunners that’s ever been.”

The reaction to the interview has been predictable. On Twitter Fisher quipped “looks like Joss Whedon got to direct an endgame after all”, and social media commentary has universally acknowledged that Whedon’s latent and allegedly racism, sexism and gaslighting behaviour – as displayed in the interview – have ended any prospect he might have had of resurrecting his career. By now, he must be bitterly regretting giving the interview. But if he had talked to some of his fallen peers, he might have acted differently.

If there is a WhatsApp group for disgraced Hollywood figures, the first piece of advice that its members should give to new recruits to the club is “never complain, never explain”. Since his spectacular downfall in 2017, Kevin Spacey’s only public statement was a succinct apology to Anthony Rapp, who was 17 when he alleges Spacey molested him at a party: “I’m beyond horrified to hear this story. I honestly do not remember the encounter, it would have been over 30 years ago. But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behaviour, and I am sorry for the feelings he describes having carried with him all these years.”

Other than releasing a trio of eccentric Christmas Eve YouTube videos, delivered in character as Frank Underwood, he kept a low profile. But he has now quietly returned to work and is making low-budget films once again. Armie Hammer’s career implosion last year amidst claims of cannibalistic fetishism has seen him keep a low profile, with obligatory stints in therapy, but he returns to the screens next month in Kenneth Branagh’s new version of Death On The Nile, in which he has the lead role. Hollywood is presumably watching to see whether Hammer’s presence is box-office poison before offering him any more work.

Then there is Noel Clarke, who fell from favour last year amidst allegations of sexual harassment and professional misconduct (which he denies). He too has kept his head low, although he is planning a return to the spotlight thanks to a proposed documentary that will explore the allegations against him, which he may end up regretting too.

Perhaps the star to have weathered his fall the best is Mel Gibson, whose career was derailed twice over accusations of anti-Semitism, domestic battery and alcohol abuse. But it has now returned to prominence. He acts regularly, was Oscar-nominated for his direction of Hacksaw Ridge and is about to direct and star in the new Lethal Weapon film.

Today, Gibson keeps his publicity commitments to a minimum, and has refused to continue apologising for his previous actions. He said, with irritation, in 2014 “It keeps coming up like a rerun, but I've dealt with it and I've dealt with it responsibly and I've worked on myself for anything I am culpable for.” Much to the chagrin of his detractors, this approach has worked. He is unlikely to give any in-depth interviews in future, but he does not need to.

This stands in contrast to Johnny Depp, who has transformed himself in the space of a few years from the biggest star in Hollywood to someone who has been found in a civil court to have assaulted his ex-wife. Depp gave car-crash interviews to Rolling Stone and GQ in which, far from expressing any contrition, he announced that ‘the truth’ was “full of betrayal” and, over the course of drink and drug-fuelled confessions, was described by one journalist as “hilarious, sly and incoherent”.

These pieces did not help his reputation, any more than the revelations about his violent and sordid marriage to Amber Heard. He was fired from his recurring role as the antagonist Grindelwald in the Fantastic Beasts film, and was last seen lending his voice to the unfortunately-named Johnny Puff in the Italian animated series Puffins. Another appearance as Captain Jack Sparrow seems impossible.

Once, a film written and directed by Whedon and starring Depp, Hammer and Spacey would have been the hottest ticket in Hollywood. Now, this particular barbershop quartet are all dealing with their cancellations in their own inimitable fashion. But, given the outrage and horror that Whedon’s spectacularly misjudged comments have provoked, it might have been worth his remembering Shakespeare’s adage: “give every man thine ear, but few thy voice.” Now, to his chagrin, it seems an inevitability that the rest is silence.