Joss Whedon
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‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ stunt coordinator Jeff Pruitt has come forward to call series creator Joss Whedon an “egomaniac,” while his wife, stunt performer Sophia Crawford followed up with a more in-depth recollection of an instance when Whedon demanded she dump Pruit, who was then her boyfriend, if she wanted to continue working on ‘Buffy’.

As Pruitt told Metro UK:

“We had a great relationship, Joss and I, but he changed as the show took off… By season four I’d become fed up and told them I was going to leave to direct Second Unit on another series. The producers told me that Joss reacted as if I was having an affair or something behind his back.”

It appears that Whedon retaliated by telling Crawford she would be fired unless she broke up with Pruitt.  As Crawford said:

“I was called into the office and I was given an ultimatum. And they said to me, ‘Come back to the show, but you need to leave Jeff, or don’t come back’ And so I basically started crying. And I said ‘F you. That’s horrible, bye.”

Upon his departure from ‘Buffy’, Pruitt penned a poem called “The Parable of the Knight” in which he cast himself as a knight, Crawford as a handmaiden, Whedon as an evil king, and the show’s star, Sarah Michelle Gellar as a spoiled princess.  (You can read the whole thing here.)

Whedon responded to the poem in the book, ‘Joss Whedon: A Biography’ penned by Amy Pascal.

“People just wear on each other and eventually sometimes you have to make a change. No one’s to blame –or everyone is. But either people get into a groove of working as part of the whole day or they don’t. And seeing yourself as a noble knight being plotting against by evil courtiers really doesn’t help.”

Whedon has since been accused of inappropriate behavior by his ex-wife, Kai Cole, who penned a lengthy essay for The Wrap, in which she stated that Whedon cheated on her on numerous occasions, including multiple “emotional” affairs with female actors he worked with, and that he used his facade as a “feminist” (thanks to the empowering message behind ‘Buffy’) to cover up his lecherous activities.

Charisma Carpenter, who played Cordelia Chase on ‘Buffy’ and ‘Angel’, accused Whedon of firing her after she got pregnant.

Those accounts surfaced in 2017, as the #MeToo movement began encouraging more victims of sexual abuse or misconduct to come forward to share their stories in order to help others who might be similarly suffering in silence.

But the claims against Whedon have bubbled back up due to inflammatory tweets from Ray Fisher, who played Cyborg in ‘Justice League’, a film that Whedon took over as its second director.  Though a nondisclosure agreement prevents Fisher from fully explaining his sudden attacks against Whedon, Fisher has declared that while on the set of ‘Justice League’, Whedon was “Gross, Abusive, Unprofessional, And Completely Unacceptable.”

Whedon– for some reason– is going through with a virtual panel during San Diego Comic-Con’s Comic-Con@Home event next week.  So… that should be interesting.

Stay tuned for details.