The late 2010s witnessed the downfall of countless celebrity careers due to a variety of controversies.
Though many of these TV and film stars are dead-set on making a comeback, we likely won't
see these names in any upcoming casting announcements.
These are the actors Hollywood won't cast in 2020.
The Jussie Smollett story of 2019 was a whirlwind tour for onlookers.
At first, he appeared to be the victim of a horrific hate crime in Chicago in late January.
"Jussie Smollett, a star on the hit television show Empire is recovering from multiple injuries
after, police say, he was brutally beaten.”
Next, he was arrested under suspicion of orchestrating the attack himself.
The charges of disorderly conduct for allegedly lying to police were later dropped in March,
however, in the resulting court case.
But that wasn't the end of it.
Citing the enormity of the resources used in the investigation - a whopping $130,106
-Chicago Police Department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi later stated, per Page Six, quote,
"The City of Chicago will be sending Mr. Smollett a bill."
According to the Chicago-Sun Times, Smollett levied a malicious prosecution counterclaim
against the City of Chicago, the police department, and others that November.
While continuing to maintain his innocence, the actor's lawyers claimed that the original
case against Smollett had caused him, quote, "humiliation, mental anguish and extreme emotional
distress."
While we await the resolution of this whole debacle, as of December 2019, it seems the
professional damage to Smollett has been done.
The actor was fired from Empire and not asked to return for its sixth season.
And with nothing on the acting docket in 2020, it appears that Hollywood may take the cautious
route and avoid hiring Smollett, at least until this situation is completely resolved.
Though Roseanne Barr was long known for being unfiltered and unpredictable, this ended up
being her undoing in a less forgiving climate.
Shortly after the revival of Roseanne — the show that made her a star — premiered in
2018, the comedian sent out a since-deleted tweet that seemed to imply that Valerie Jarrett,
who served as a senior advisor to President Barack Obama, was the child of the, quote,
"Muslim Brotherhood & Planet of the Apes."
The backlash response was swift.
According to The Washington Post, ABC officials immediately called an emergency meeting.
Then-President of the ABC Entertainment Group, Channing Dungey, released a statement, calling
the tweet, quote, "abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values."
And just hours later, Roseanne was cancelled and the titular star was axed.
While the series was later rebranded as The Conners, Barr's character was famously killed
off, leaving the actress vocal about the fallout.
"I thought the b---- was WHITE!!
G-----n it!
I thought the b---- was WHITE!!"
Still, Barr's planning a comeback tour of sorts.
Now, don't go expecting her to appear on national television in 2020.
According to Deadline, she'll start on the stage first, joining forces with Andrew Dice
Clay in a live show called the Mr. and Mrs. America Tour.
Speaking to Fox News, Clay defended his longtime friend.
He said:
"She's a comic because she's wacky.
I've known her since we were kids.
When people ask about what she said, I say, 'She's a comic!'
We gotta stop policing comedians.
This is America!"
Oooh, boy.
Much of the 2019 news stream was dominated by the college admissions scandal.
Lori Loughlin and fellow actress Felicity Huffman headed a slew of parents accused of
paying large sums of money to have their children's applications to elite colleges altered.
While the nationwide scheme has made it unlikely for either Loughlin or Huffman to appear in
any Hollywood productions in 2020, the way that they've gone about dealing with their
individual charges may have changed their paths slightly.
After pleading guilty to paying a $15,000 bribe to boost her daughter's SAT scores,
Huffman served a 14-day prison sentence and committed herself to supporting imprisoned
women.
At least for the time being, it's not hard to imagine her making a comeback in the not-so-distant
future.
Loughlin, however, has taken a different route.
Accused of paying $500,000 to have their daughters accepted at USC as crew team recruits, the
Full House alum and her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, have pleaded not guilty to their charges,
which, according to Vanity Fair, resulted in a six-month sentence in a related case.
While Loughlin's case is her own and may end much differently, she was previously fired
from The Hallmark Channel and would not go on to appear in the final season of Netflix's
Fuller House – making it unlikely she'll return to any screens anytime soon.
As Terrence Howard wrapped shooting for the final season of Empire in September 2019,
he made a surprise announcement to Extra.
When asked what he had planned for the future, he claimed that he was quitting acting.
Howard dished:
"Oh, I'm done with acting.
I'm done pretending … ."
"I've spent 37 years pretending to be people so people can watch me pretend, and I think
it's time to just be Terry for a while.”
While attending the 71st Annual Emmy Awards shortly after, Howard gave a rather strange
explanation for retiring to KTLA Fox.
Speaking of discovering the, quote, "science that Pythagoras was searching for," he then
launched into greater detail… sort of.
The soon-to-be-former actor explained:
"I was able to open up the flower of life properly and find the real wave conjugations
that we've been looking for, for 10,000 years."
He went on:
"Why would I continue walking on water for tips when I've got an entire generation to
teach a whole new world?"
At the time of this writing, Howard is still finishing up filming the movie Selfie, so
it will be interesting to see if he really follows through on his promise to end his
acting career.
In any case, though Howard may be unpredictable, we'll have to take him at his word at this
point and assume that he really is finished.
Eliza Dushku joined the cast of Bull for a short three-episode stint in 2017, but was
supposed to stay on longer, according to The New York Times in 2018.
Reportedly made to feel uncomfortable by Michael Weatherly, the star of the show, Dushku was
eventually written off after she complained.
However, she then sought mediation with CBS and received a confidential settlement of
$9.5 million.
Addressing the conflict, Weatherly stated in part:
"I made some jokes mocking some lines in the script.
When Eliza told me that she wasn't comfortable with my language and attempt at humor, I was
mortified to have offended her and immediately apologized."
But that explanation didn't fly with Dusku, who fired back in a Boston Globe op-ed.
She wrote:
"I do not want to hear that I have a 'humor deficit' or can't take a joke.
I did not overreact.
I took a job and, because I did not want to be harassed, I was fired."
In the piece, she detailed Weatherly's alleged on-set behavior, claiming that he made "rape
van" jokes, leered at her, smelled her provocatively, and made audible groans.
While CBS chose to renew the show after these disturbing allegations came to light, Steven
Spielberg and his Amblin TV production company have since pulled out of the series.
The network might still be backing their guy, but at the time of this writing, it remains
to be seen how much industry support Weatherly will receive following this scandal.
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