In the world of prestige television, the behind-the-scenes scandals are often as dramatic as what ends
up on the screen.
As one of the biggest names in prestige TV, HBO is no stranger to controversy.
With that in mind, here are HBO's biggest scandals ever.
As the producers of Game of Thrones, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have brought loads
of attention and Emmy Awards to HBO.
As that series was nearing the end of its run, the two looked ahead to their next projects.
In July 2017, HBO ordered a drama series from the pair called Confederate, which was to
be set in the contemporary United States just before a third Civil War in an alternate reality
where slavery endured.
The producers and HBO were met with immediate backlash over the news.
Actor David Harewood predicted that many Black actors would refuse to appear in the show,
and activist April Reign organized a #NoConfederate protest on Twitter.
HBO then issued a statement that read in part,
"We have great respect for the dialogue and concern being expressed around Confederate
[...] The project is currently in its infancy so we hope that people will reserve judgment
until there is something to see."
Ultimately, though, there was never anything to see, as Confederate was never actually
produced, partly due to Benioff and Weiss' busy schedules.
Comedian T.J. Miller played opportunistic leech Erlich Bachman during the first four
seasons of Silicon Valley, HBO's scathing satire of the Northern California tech industry.
At the end of Season Four, Erlich flew to Asia and was tricked into living in a permanently
drugged-out state in an opium den.
That dramatic plot twist was also how Silicon Valley producers got rid of Miller, with whom
they'd been having conflicts for some time.
As co-creator Mike Judge told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017,
"It was kind of becoming clear that he didn't want to do the show anymore."
Miller often reportedly showed up to tapings or table reads late, unprepared, or sometimes
not at all.
As Judge explained to THR in another interview,
"It's not fun to work with someone who doesn't want to be there."
Miller remembered things a little differently, though.
As he put it to THR himself, his exit from the show, quote, "felt like a breakup."
He claimed that the initial plan was to reduce his appearances from 10 episodes a season
to as few as three, which was fine by him, as he was so busy with other opportunities,
and he was ready to leave the show altogether.
"Let's hit the road.
We're gonna piss in everyone's car.
Ha ha!
Am I using that right?"
Based on a 1973 movie written and directed by Jurassic Park novelist Michael Crichton,
Westworld imagines a future in which the wealthy attend immersive theme parks staffed by hyper-realistic
humanoid robots who serve their every whim.
Everything in the Westworld park is fake, and there's a lot of CGI required to make
the show come to life, and yet producers opted to use real elephants for a Season 2 episode
in 2018.
One of the two elephants employed was loaned out to the production by an animal casting
company called Have Trunk Will Travel.
That company has come under scrutiny in the past for its aggressive and allegedly abusive
treatment of elephants, including hitting, poking with a bullhook, and the use of electric
shock.
As PETA official Lauren Thomasson wrote in an open letter to HBO,
"In light of the egregious cruelty and human health risks as well as the public's growing
opposition to the use of animals for entertainment [...] we're urging HBO to commit to not using
any wild animals in future episodes or other series."
HBO then released a statement assuring PETA and the public,
"All of the animals featured on HBO series are treated with the utmost care and respect
for their health, safety, and well-being."
A new show created by David Milch was bound to be a major event at HBO.
Back in 2004, he brought the acclaimed revisionist western Deadwood to the channel.
And then in 2011, he unveiled Luck, a series about the denizens of a horse racing track.
The rest of the talent was also significant, as it starred Dustin Hoffman and Nick Nolte,
and Michael Mann produced and directed the first episode.
HBO ordered a second season just days after the series premiere.
But then just weeks later, they cancelled the whole thing.
The shocking reason: horses were dying during the production.
As reported by Forbes, during the filming of a racing sequence in the pilot, one horse
fell and broke a leg and was soon thereafter euthanized.
Another horse had to be put down during the filming of a later episode, and a third suffered
a fatally broken neck and other injuries when it fell while being guided to a stable by
handlers.
As HBO explained in a statement,
"It is with heartbreak that executive producers David Milch and Michael Mann, together with
HBO have decided to cease all future production on the series Luck [...] While we maintained
the highest safety standards possible, accidents unfortunately happen and it is impossible
to guarantee they won't in the future."
In December 2020, WarnerMedia announced that many of its most significant 2021 movies would
debut the same day in movie theaters and on HBO Max, its new streaming service.
Among the high-profile films included in this plan were the likes of Godzilla vs. Kong,
Dune, and Space Jam: A New Legacy.
The main reason was that the shutdown of movie theaters during the COVID-19 pandemic had
affected the way the company operated.
As Warner Bros. executive Ann Sarnoff explained,
"No one wants films back on the big screen more than we do.
We know new content is the lifeblood of theatrical exhibition, but we have to balance this with
the reality that most theaters in the U.S. will likely operate at reduced capacity throughout
2021."
"So we are in the process, having many conversations with the talent, the agents, and the exhibitors."
Unfortunately, Warner made this announcement without letting filmmakers know that their
movies would appear on much smaller screens than they'd intended.
And that idea upset some major Hollywood directors.
As Judd Apatow put it at a Variety event,
"It's the type of disrespect that you hear about in the history of show business.
But to do that to just every single person that you work with is really somewhat stunning."
Christopher Nolan was a bit more blunt while speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, as he
said,
"Some of our industry's biggest filmmakers and most important movie stars went to bed
the night before thinking they were working for the greatest movie studio and woke up
to find out they were working for the worst streaming service."
Big Love can accurately be called a family drama, but since it aired on HBO, there was
a bit of a twist.
It told the story of a man, his wife, his other wife, and his third wife, and all the
kids they had between them as they lived their fundamentalist Mormon lives in secret in present-day
Utah.
Neither traditionalist religious sects nor polygamy had really been explored on TV before
Big Love, and the series earned a slew of awards recognition, including an Emmy nomination
for Outstanding Drama Series.
But on more than one occasion, the show upset members of the real-life Church of Latter
Day Saints, who are colloquially referred to as Mormons.
As reported by NPR, they thought that the show didn't do a good enough job to differentiate
between polygmay-practicing fundamentalist groups and the mainstream LDS church, which
doesn't support polygamy.
In 2009, one Big Love episode crossed the line for many LDS adherents when it depicted
one of the church's sacred and secret rituals.
Performed before a Mormon enters a marriage, the "endowment ceremony" uses sacred language,
and only other church members may witness it.
LDS churchgoers called for HBO to not air the episode, but the network went ahead anyway,
although it did release an apology.
Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel reports on the issues surrounding athletics with the
kind of curious and hard-hitting long-form reporting usually reserved for politics and
social issues.
Over the course of its run, it's won acclaim in the form of 33 Sports Emmys.
About a decade into its run, the show picked a fight with one of its favorite topics: the
National Football League.
In an August 2006 episode, Gumbel criticized outgoing NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue and
NFL Players Association president Gene Upshaw.
His aim appeared to be to make new commissioner Roger Goodell aware of what he perceived to
be a union head that stood down to the league as a matter of course.
As Gumbel put it,
"Before he cleans out his office, have Paul Tagliabue show you where he keeps Gene Upshaw's
leash.
By making the docile head of the players union his personal pet, your predecessor has kept
the peace without giving players the kind of guarantees other pros take for granted.
Try to make sure no one competent ever replaces Upshaw on your watch."
Tagliabue didn't really take the bait in response, as he called Gumbel's comments, quote, "as
uninformed as anything I've read or heard in a long, long time."
In 2014, Ari Shavit, a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, published the nonfiction
book My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel.
It aimed to tell the modern history of the Middle Eastern nation through intimate sources
via diary entries, letters, and interviews.
It sold well and won several awards, and in 2015 HBO bought the adaptation rights and
started pre-production on a documentary film based on the book.
As HBO chairman Richard Plepler said at an industry conference,
"The book left me awestruck and as moved as I've been maybe ever.
When I first approached him, I said to Ari that I’ve waited my whole adult life to
find this book."
But then in 2016, Shavit was accused of sexual assault by another Israeli journalist, and
then of more improper behavior by a staff member of an Israel advocacy organization.
Shavit apologized, though he also lost his job at Haaretz.
Before HBO could make a decision on whether or not the film version of My Promised Land
was still on, two more women accused Shavit of acts of assault.
He apologized once again, and the movie never happened.
From 1992 to 2002, comedian Bill Maher hosted the ABC show Politically Incorrect, a panel-style
talk show on which Maher and his guests would comically discuss the issues of the day.
But the series was cancelled after Maher called American military policy cowardly in the wake
of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
"We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away.
That's cowardly."
In 2003, HBO hired Maher to revive and virtually re-create the show as Real Time with Bill
Maher.
But his old show would play a big part in a notable snafu on his new show.
During a 2010 Real Time episode, Maher aired a Politically Incorrect clip from 1999 that
featured Delaware senatorial candidate Christine O'Donnell mentioning that she'd, quote, "dabbled
into witchcraft."
Following this, O'Donnell became the media's most covered senatorial candidate in the 2010
midterms, according to the Pew Research Center, although she nevertheless lost her election.
Then in 2012, Maher invited O'Donnell onto Real Time and apologized.
As he put it,
"I know when I brought out the witch tape I made your life hell, and I'm sorry about
that."
Girls was undoubtedly one of the most talked-about new shows of 2012.
Created by series lead Lena Dunham, the show concerned four twenty-something women living
in New York City as they try to get their messy professional and social lives on track.
Critics were particularly concerned that a show purporting to be the voice of the millennial
generation didn't include any people of color.
"I may be the voice of my generation.
Or at least a voice of a generation."
Later on in Girls' run, it generated a lot of ink over its frank and startling depictions
of sexuality.
Vulture, for one, wondered if an unsettling Season Two encounter between the characters
Adam and Natalia constituted assault.
There was also significant behind-the-scenes drama during the show's time on the air.
Early during production of Season 3, Christopher Abbott, who played the character Charlie,
suddenly left the series.
As a source told Page Six,
"[He was] at odds with Lena.
[He] didn't like the direction things are going in."
If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available.
Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline
at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).