Actor Hartley Sawyer has reportedly been fired from the cast of The CW’s The Flash, on which he has played Ralph Dibny/Elongated Man for three years, after a series of old racist and misogynist tweets surfaced last week. The firing was announced today in a statement from The CW, WB TV and Berlanti Productions, and The Flash showrunner Eric Wallace.

Here’s the full statement as reported by THR:

“Hartley Sawyer will not be returning for season seven of The Flash,” reads a statement from The CW, producers Warner Bros. TV and Berlanti Productions and executive producer Eric Wallace. “In regards to Mr. Sawyer’s posts on social media, we do not tolerate derogatory remarks that target any race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, or sexual orientation. Such remarks are antithetical to our values and polices, which strive and evolve to promote a safe, inclusive and productive environment for our workforce.”

Wallace, himself a black man, also issued an additional statement regarding the reasoning behind Sawyer’s firing:

Sawyer’s tweets (which you can read here, but honestly I wouldn’t bother if I were you), all of which are from between 2011 and 2014, predate his time on The Flash, though not by much, as he joined the series in 2017. They read like the poor attempts at humor of a struggling comedian trying to be edgy and get a reaction. Sawyer (who has since deleted his Twitter account) admits as much in an apology he issued on Instagram last week:

This is really disappointing news, not just because of the content of what Sawyer tweeted, but because of what his (totally justified) firing means for the show going forward. I’ve enjoyed the levity that Ralph Dibny has brought to The Flash since he joined the show during its fourth season, and the addition of Natalie Dreyfuss as Ralph’s future comic book wife, Sue Dearbon, was a nice shot-in-the-arm for the most recent season of the series. No word on whether the series will recast Ralph with another actor or just write the character out of the series.

The Flash will return for its seventh season in 2021.

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2 COMMENTS

  1. So true. Even more so since a post from the dawn of the internet counts equally to a post made less than a minute ago. God only knows who’d be fired today if all those dial-up bulletin board logs surfaced.

  2. As someone who was abused as a child it’s fascinating watching people try and claim that there’s a difference between what James Gunn did and what this guy did. If one is deserving of having your career ended over, then both are.

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