In a letter sent to Deadline and posted today (5.5), Frank Langella has expressed profound gratitude to the Millennial actress who not only got him fired from the Netflix series The Fall of the House of Usher, but has all but terminated his career because of a complaint about inappropriate leg touching and whatnot.
The 84 year-old Langella has said that he’s “enormously grateful” about having been fired and possibly cancelled industry-wide, as this incident has allowed him to do more reading, hiking, cooking, movie-watching and other leisurely pursuits.
“Life is relatively short, and yet so far I’ve relished eight and a half decades of glorious living on this bountiful blue planet,” Langella wrote. “I’m looking forward to filling my remaining years with joy and devotion and boundless Zen enthusiasm.
“So I can’t thank the actress in question enough…getting whacked and being metaphorically tarred and feathered as a sexist dinosaur has opened so many spiritual doors…thank you, anonymous actress who was playing the ‘young wife’ of my Roderick Usher character, and thank you, #MeToo mafia.”
I’m kidding, I’m fantasizing, I’m fooling around.
Langella is actually outraged about what has happened to him over the last few weeks. Here are portions of a “guest column” he’s written for Deadline:
“I have been canceled. Just like that.
“In the increasing madness that currently pervades our industry, I could not have imagined that the words collateral damage would fall upon my shoulders. They have brought with them a weight I had not expected to bear in the closing decades of my career. And along with it has come an unanticipated sense of grave danger.
“On April 14 of this year, I was fired by Netflix for what they determined to be unacceptable behavior on set. My first instinct was to blame. To lash out and seek vengeance. I interviewed crisis managers, tough connected lawyers, the professionally sympathetic at $800 per hour. Free advice was proffered as well:
“’Don’t play the victim.’ ‘Don’t sue. They’ll dig into your past.’ ‘Sign the NDA, take the money and run.’ ‘Do the talk shows. Show contrition; feign humility. Say you’ve learned a lot.’
“Apologize. Apologize. Apologize.
“I was playing the leading role of Roderick Usher in Edgar Allan Poe’s classic The Fall of the House of Usher, modernized as an eight-episode series for Netflix. It is a glorious role and I had come to regard it as, most likely, my last hurrah. Bizarrely prophetic under the current circumstances.
“On March 25 of this year, I was performing a love scene with the actress playing my young wife. Both of us were fully clothed. I was sitting on a couch, she was standing in front of me. The director called cut.
“‘He touched my leg,’ said the actress. ‘That was not in the blocking.” She then turned and walked off the set, followed by the director and the intimacy coordinator. I attempted to follow, but was asked to ‘give her some space.’ I waited for approximately one hour, and was then told she was not returning to set and we were wrapped.
“Not long after, an investigation began. Approximately one week later, Human Resources asked to speak to me by phone. ‘Before the love scene began on March 25,’ said the questioner, ‘our intimacy coordinator suggested where you both should put your hands. It has been brought to our attention that you said, ‘This is absurd!’
“‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I did. And I still think so.’ It was a love scene on camera. Legislating the placement of hands, to my mind, is ludicrous. It undermines instinct and spontaneity.
“Toward the end of our conversation, she suggested that I not contact the young lady, the intimacy coordinator, or anyone else in the company. ‘We don’t want to risk retaliation,’ she said. When I mentioned that it was certainly not my intention to…she cut me off politely and said: ‘Intention is not our concern. Netflix deals only with impact.’
“When you are the leading actor, it requires, in my opinion, that you set an example by keeping the atmosphere light and friendly. Nevertheless, these were some of the allegations: 1. ‘He told an off-color joke’. 2. ‘Sometimes he called me baby or honey.’ 3. ‘He’d give me a hug or touch my shoulder.’
“You cannot do that, Frank,” said our producer. “You can’t joke. You can’t compliment. You can’t touch. It’s a new order.”
Various indignities that have resulted “are, to my mind, the real definition of unacceptable behavior,” Langella wrote.
“Cancel culture is the antithesis of democracy. It inhibits conversation and debate. It limits our ability to listen, mediate, and exchange opposing views. Most tragically, it annihilates moral judgment.
“This is not fair. This is not just. This is not American.
Frank Langella / May 5, 2022
HE assessment: It’s been clear for three or four years now that younger professional-class actresses (Millennials and Zoomers) have three abiding interests — (a) being as good as they can at their craft, (b) advancing and enhancing their careers through the usual strategies, and (c) terminating the careers of older male actors who’ve failed to respect #MeToo rules regarding on-set behavior.
HE to older male actors: If you want to die, these actresses will be all too willing to oblige. If you don’t want to die, regard Millennial and Zoomer actresses as cold-blooded Lithuanian assassins and behave accordingly.