Another death on The 100, another controversy — although at least we saw this one coming. Ricky Whittle recently went on AfterBuzz TV to talk about his character Lincoln’s recent departure on the show, which he says was his choice … but only because the showrunner Jason Rothenberg bullied him into leaving. “At the beginning of the season, [Lincoln] had a whole story line that was cut, that was just nonexistent. It was my choice to go,” Whittle said. “This is going to be the most controversial thing I will say, is that basically Jason Rothenberg abused his position to make my job untenable. What he did was disgusting and he should be ashamed … He was professionally bullying me, cutting out all the story line I was supposed to be doing, cutting lines, cutting everything out, trying to make my character and myself as insignificant as possible.”
The acrimonious relationship between Rothenberg and Whittle was well-known. Whittle’s own mother went on Twitter to call out Rothenberg last month:
Don’t cry for Whittle, though: He’s already lined up another gig on Bryan Fuller’s American Gods. He said that both Peter Roth, the president of TV at the WB and Mark Pedowitz, the president of the CW, were supportive of his decision to leave, and even allowed him to audition for the Starz show because they could see that his character was “not being used at all.” When he asked other producers what was going on, they just told him, “You need to speak to him. I don’t know what his problems are with you.” You can watch his full interview here:
Rothenberg himself simply released this anodyne statement:
Ricky Whittle is a talented actor; I appreciate his work on The 100 and wish him all the best moving forward on American Gods.
