EXCLUSIVE: Disney has severed ties with Fred Savage after numerous complaints of misconduct as executive producer and director of ABC’s new comedy series The Wonder Years, produced by 20th Television, part of Disney Television Studios. The allegations were investigated, leading to Savage’s dismissal.
The Wonder Years, a reboot of 1988’s favorite series starring Savage, has not yet been renewed for a second season, but remains controversial.
“We have recently become aware of allegations of misconduct by Fred Savage and, as is the case with politics, an investigation has been launched. After his graduation, a decision was made to terminate his work as executive producer and director of The Wonder Years, “a 20th Television spokesman said in a statement to Deadline, declining to comment further.
Details of the nature of the allegations are unclear, but I hear they include verbal outbursts and inappropriate behavior. The deadline turned to Savage representatives for comment.
Savage has been accused of misconduct in the past.
In 2018, actress Alley Mills claimed that the cancellation of the original Wonder Years followed a sexual harassment lawsuit against her colleagues Savage (then 16) and Jason Hervey (then 20), which she said was settled outside the court. . Mills played the mother of their characters in the series.
That same year, a member of the Savage series on Fox’s Grinder filed a lawsuit accusing the actor of attacking and harassing her on the set of the series in 2015. Then Savage called the allegations “completely baseless and completely untrue,” while 20th Television who produced the show, said she had found no evidence of Savage’s wrongdoing after investigating the allegations. This case was also ultimately decided out of court.
The accusations are probably a shock to a generation of Americans who grew up with Savage and his hugely popular characters as a child actor: he played the grandson of the 1987 modern classic Princess Bride and Kevin Arnold, a teenager who grew up in a suburban middle-class family 60’s and early 1970’s, in the original series Wonder Years, which aired on ABC from 1988-93. He was 12 when he was cast in the series, and at 13 he received the first of two Emmy nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series – becoming the youngest actor ever nominated in the category.
Subsequently, Savage branched out and worked largely behind the camera as a director. In the new Wonder Years, he directed eight episodes of Season 1, including the pilot, in addition to the executive producer of the show, which follows the black middle-class Williams family in Montgomery, Alabama, in the turbulent late 1960s.
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