Clayne Crawford Lashes Out About Reports Of Lethal Weapon On-Set Behavior

In an interview with the Drinking Bros podcast (via TVLine), former Lethal Weapon star Clayne Crawford lashed out at some of the media reports on his on-set behavior, which eventually led to his dismissal from the show and replacement by Seann William Scott. Here are highlights:

On the tapes of the incident: “I knew that they had those tapes, and they had been blackmailing me with that… anytime I had a problem with [Damon Wayans]. When the incident happened, I had to pay half of my salary for that episode, I had to spend six weeks in anger management every day on my lunch break, and I had to be escorted to and from set by a security guard, so it was humiliating.”

On rumors that he yelled at children: “Blatant f—king lie… Clearly I’m yelling at the guy whose job it is to get the set quiet. And here’s the thing: Did I make a poor choice? Absolutely, and I felt embarrassed in the moment because I was belligerent… We’d been shooting a three-page scene for eight hours, OK? We were so behind, and we continued to try and shoot through all of this noise… We stopped production over seven times. I called my agent, we were writing emails, we were phoning everyone we could to try and help us resolve the situation. No one would come in, no one would help us… So I shot all of my coverage in between the sounds.”

On the tapes leaking: “I did not expect that tape to come out. That was the episode I was directing… On Damon’s first or second day… he called in sick, which, he never called in sick. [He] comes back to work the next day and he’s shooting hoops. And I was like, ‘Are you feeling better?’ and he was like, ‘Come on, bro. Everybody needed a day off.’”

On his last conversation with studio president Peter Roth: “He said, ‘Clayne, I can’t promise you that I can save your job, but what I can tell you is that you have to make a public announcement apologizing, publicly, to Damon Wayans’. I was like, “What the fu—? Peter, why would I apologize publicly because he and I had a riff on set?’ And he’s like, ‘Clayne, that statement alone tells me you don’t want to come back… If I were you, I’d look your children in the eyes, and I’d look your wife in the eyes, and you need to make a decision.’”