LETHAL IN SO MANY WAYS
Posted: 070118

Clayne Crawford was fired from the Lethal Weapon TV series and has been replaced with American Pie’s Seann William Scott. The show was renewed by FOX but the network only ordered 13 episodes. At the FOX up fronts the head of programming told reporters they had no input on Scott coming in and so they didn’t want to commit to a full season. We had already heard that Crawford and co-star Damon Wayans weren’t friendly at all and most of the crew wasn’t fond of Crawford either. A lot of the tension had to do with Wayans’ refusing to do table reads of the scripts which led to a lot of turnover behind the scenes. The executive producer Matt Miller was perceived by some to be in over his head. Variety talked to about 36 people who worked on the show and were told that the crews were split in factions, production was stopped many times, and things got so bad that security guards were present on set at all times to make sure fights didn’t break out. Warner's will fire any crew members loyal to Crawford before production on season 3 starts. On one occasion while filming at a bad location Crawford yelled for the crew to shut up kids playing around the location while filming. The director of the episode got into arguments with a few of the actors and walked away from the episode. Producer Frank Waldeck was brought in to cool things off but when Crawford directed an episode and a special-effects explosion ended up with Wayans struck on the back of the head by a piece of shrapnel the problems returned. The following day Wayans and Crawford got into an argument over it which led to Crawford calling him a crybaby and teasing him about his family. Wayans refused to do the rest of the scene that day and production was shut down for the day. The episode was then rewritten and the two didn’t share any scenes together. Once Crawford was fired he took the high road on social media but Wayans took the low road by suggesting that Crawford hit Lance Henriksen in the mouth with a bottle which was an out and out lie. A few told Variety that Crawford was warm, dedicated and passionate about his work but got angry when he was frustrated. Some said he had on more than one occasion cussed out crew members. Wayans was described as charming but at times hard to work with. As a fan of the series I found Wayans less and less entertaining each week and so like a lot of fans will not watch season three. I also found it interesting that this was Crawford’s third series but have found no evidence he was a problem on those shows.