‘American Gods’ Actor Orlando Jones Says He Was Fired Because Mr. Nancy Is ‘Wrong Message for Black America’
- Thread starter keone
- Start date
American Gods canceled at Starz after 3 seasons
The network is in conversations on a potential event series or event movie that would conclude the storytelling of Neil Gaiman's book of the same name.
By Lauren Huff
March 29, 2021 at 11:11 PM EDT
American Gods has ended its journey as a series at Starz.
The network canceled the show after three seasons, EW can confirm. "American Gods will not return for a fourth season. Everyone at STARZ is grateful to the dedicated cast and crew, and our partners at Fremantle who brought author and executive producer Neil Gaiman's ever-relevant story to life that speaks to the cultural climate of our country," a Starz spokesperson said in a statement to EW.
The decision to cancel the fantasy drama series comes amid low viewership for the season and just a week after the season 3 finale. Multiplatform viewership declined 65 percent from American Gods season 1 to season 3, according to sources.
The show has had a long and tumultuous journey, with four different showrunners tapped across the three seasons, various production delays, and a public falling out with star Orlando Jones, among other things.
The cancelation news is sure to upset fans, because as Gaiman put it in a recent interview with EW, "If we don't get a season 4, we've ended on the single most frustrating, upsetting and maddening place that any season could possibly end."
To that end, viewers could be in luck. Per sources, the network is in conversations on a potential event series or event movie that would conclude the storytelling of Gaiman's book of the same name.
'American Gods' canceled at Starz after 3 seasons
The network is in conversations on a potential event series or event movie that would conclude the storytelling of Neil Gaiman's book of the same name.ew.com
I knew Season 3 was going to be the last season!!...
American Gods Is Dead After Third Season on Starz, But Might Live Again as a TV Movie
By Halle Kiefer@hallekiefer
Photo: Starz
Call now, because the Center of America Motel is about to be completely booked solid. The stars of American Gods will hopefully treat themselves to a well-deserved vacation, now that Starz has canceled the fantasy series, based on Neil Gaiman’s 2001 book of the same name. American Gods, which follows Shadow Moon and his fellow deities as the Old Gods and the New Gods vie for domination in the modern world, premiered its third and final season on January 10.
“Everyone at Starz is grateful to the dedicated cast and crew, and our partners at Fremantle who brought author and executive producer Neil Gaiman’s ever-relevant story to life that speaks to the cultural climate of our country,” a Starz spokesperson told Deadline about the cancellation on Monday.
However, much like some of our best gods, American Gods might be returning in the not-too-distant future. According to Deadline, the series, which stars Ricky Whittle as Shadow Moon and Ian McShane as his scheming father Mr. Wednesday, could return for “an event series or a TV movie” to finish the story set up in Gaiman’s novel. The show’s third season concluded on March 21 with the (seeming) death of Shadow Moon, which Mr. Wednesday then leverages to gain power in the ongoing battle of the gods. Until we have a concrete confirmation of a new American Gods, however, we’re all just going to have to have faith.
By Halle Kiefer@hallekiefer
Photo: Starz
Call now, because the Center of America Motel is about to be completely booked solid. The stars of American Gods will hopefully treat themselves to a well-deserved vacation, now that Starz has canceled the fantasy series, based on Neil Gaiman’s 2001 book of the same name. American Gods, which follows Shadow Moon and his fellow deities as the Old Gods and the New Gods vie for domination in the modern world, premiered its third and final season on January 10.
“Everyone at Starz is grateful to the dedicated cast and crew, and our partners at Fremantle who brought author and executive producer Neil Gaiman’s ever-relevant story to life that speaks to the cultural climate of our country,” a Starz spokesperson told Deadline about the cancellation on Monday.
However, much like some of our best gods, American Gods might be returning in the not-too-distant future. According to Deadline, the series, which stars Ricky Whittle as Shadow Moon and Ian McShane as his scheming father Mr. Wednesday, could return for “an event series or a TV movie” to finish the story set up in Gaiman’s novel. The show’s third season concluded on March 21 with the (seeming) death of Shadow Moon, which Mr. Wednesday then leverages to gain power in the ongoing battle of the gods. Until we have a concrete confirmation of a new American Gods, however, we’re all just going to have to have faith.
I enjoyed the first two seasons primarily because of Mr. Nancy but I threw this show in the garbage when they got rid of Orlando Jones
If you want to check it to keep up with the story then yes, but if you aren't that into it don't bother.
Anti-climactic.
Full of side stories that are basically just time-fillers.
Laura Moon (Emily Browning) gets a decent story arc.
The rest of it is shit.
One of the worst series endings in years.
Like I said they literally fucked up the show by being a little racist and stupid. In a few years I would like to do the show again with Regina King as the director.
FudemAmerican Gods canceled at Starz after 3 seasons
The network is in conversations on a potential event series or event movie that would conclude the storytelling of Neil Gaiman's book of the same name.
By Lauren Huff
March 29, 2021 at 11:11 PM EDT
American Gods has ended its journey as a series at Starz.
The network canceled the show after three seasons, EW can confirm. "American Gods will not return for a fourth season. Everyone at STARZ is grateful to the dedicated cast and crew, and our partners at Fremantle who brought author and executive producer Neil Gaiman's ever-relevant story to life that speaks to the cultural climate of our country," a Starz spokesperson said in a statement to EW.
The decision to cancel the fantasy drama series comes amid low viewership for the season and just a week after the season 3 finale. Multiplatform viewership declined 65 percent from American Gods season 1 to season 3, according to sources.
The show has had a long and tumultuous journey, with four different showrunners tapped across the three seasons, various production delays, and a public falling out with star Orlando Jones, among other things.
The cancelation news is sure to upset fans, because as Gaiman put it in a recent interview with EW, "If we don't get a season 4, we've ended on the single most frustrating, upsetting and maddening place that any season could possibly end."
To that end, viewers could be in luck. Per sources, the network is in conversations on a potential event series or event movie that would conclude the storytelling of Gaiman's book of the same name.
'American Gods' canceled at Starz after 3 seasons
The network is in conversations on a potential event series or event movie that would conclude the storytelling of Neil Gaiman's book of the same name.
This last season was jumbled bullshit
i barely got through 2 episodes
It was so much jumbled bullshit just terrible terrible shit that egos ruined once again
i barely got through 2 episodes
It was so much jumbled bullshit just terrible terrible shit that egos ruined once again
How Orlando Jones Constructed His Showstopping American Gods Monologue
By Abraham Josephine Riesman
Orlando Jones in American Gods. Photo: FremantleMedia North America
Spoilers ahead for tonight’s episode of American Gods.
Every once in a while, a monologue comes along that seems destined to be recited by theater students and auditioning actors until the sun burns out. Tonight, Starz’s Neil Gaiman adaptation American Gods granted the world such a monologue and put it in the mouth of Orlando Jones. As Mr. Nancy, the well-dressed, anthropomorphization of African trickster spider-god Anansi, he delivers a blistering soliloquy to a ship full of slaves on their way to colonial America and it seems writ by fire, torching the lies we tell ourselves about the ways black people are treated in the U.S.
Although the text is potent, the scene gains much of its velocity from Jones’s performance, which verbally dances between accents and tones and in just a few short minutes, presents a character unlike any other on the show. At a recent Manhattan press event, Vulture caught up with Jones to talk about building that monologue and the character of Mr. Nancy, in general. Below is an edited version of what he said.
Let me give you a little backstory. So about a year and a half ago, there was a conversation online about who should play Mr. Nancy. Neil [Gaiman] was out talking about the book. And in that conversation, my name came up and then that got sent to Neil. And so then Neil and I became Twitter friends off of fans telling him that I should be Mr. Nancy. That started almost a year and a half, two years ago. So online there has been a conversation about me being Mr. Nancy this entire time. Margery Simkin, who’s the casting director for this show, she was the one saying to the creators, “Orlando Jones. That’s the person you should go to.” So I’m glad that they were both thinking the same thing.
Sign up for Streamliner
Vulture’s weekly newsletter of the best TV and movie recommendations.
It’s weird that it’s so fortuitous that I would’ve been talking to Neil Gaiman about being Mr. Nancy and then suddenly they make [the show] and he’s like, “Come do Mr. Nancy!” And I’m like, “Oh, you wasn’t joking!” So it’s a nerd thing come true for me. I don’t have clear eyes on it because I’m geeked out, heavily. As a huge fan of American Gods and as an insane Gaimanite — or whatever it’s called if you love Neil Gaiman — I had a real sense of who the character was. How it was written. I knew that many people had envisioned him as older. But that didn’t really make sense to me because Gods are Gods. Don’t they just appear in the form they appear in? So, for me, it was like, “Eh, that’s less important.” Let’s not make a meal out of it or anything.
[The script for the monologue was] essentially: You’re on a slave ship, and you’re in the Middle Passage, and there are these people here, and here’s what’s happening, and Anansi appears. Script-wise, obviously the dialogue is there, but that’s pretty much it in terms of your location is the slave ship and here they are. [Showrunners] Michael [Green] and Bryan [Fuller], they were like, “It’d be great if it was funny in such a way.” What Mr. Nancy ultimately has to say is not light; to deliver that or to try and create that conversation around a voice that was yelling just seemed the absolutely wrong way to go, because that invites no one to the conversation. I wanted him to be entertaining, but more than anything I wanted anybody to be able to come to the conversation and not feel like they had been yelled at, and that meant to sort of make him agnostic in the sense that he’s a trickster, he might be saying this to help you out, he might be saying this to get something he wants.
He knows the entire time he’s going to tell you to burn the thing down. Despite the fantastical nature of his speech, at the end of the day, it’s, “Ay, y’all should kill y’allselves.” And that’s in a confined space. So, for me, that performance is really about: How do you enrapture people in this particular space at this particular junction in their lives? Like, all hope is gone. You have no idea what you’re going into. You are in the scariest moments of your life, with more fear in front of you because you don’t know what’s on the other side. You have no clue. You’re just chained somewhere. So how does that conversation begin? In a way that’s authentic. Because if it’s not real, none of these people are listening to you. They are marching to their death. Your bullshit is the last thing they have time for. You’re trying to pull them out of that space into the hope of what this promise can be, to the reality of what it ultimately is.
And then to the decision that is in front of them, it felt like, in a slave ship space, it needed to be delivered in a certain way. It’s a confined space. I’ve got about three steps that way, two steps this way, the camera’s there. I don’t have a lot of options. I don’t want it to be too big because that’s not what it is. I’m not trying to put on a party. I think you’ll find Nancy changing a lot by virtue of the space that he’s in. Because he’s a spider and that’s how they build webs: They tend to take an element in the corner and present out accordingly. So, for me, I just wanted to think about the character in terms of the way that he moves.
I like fashion for a lot of different reasons, particularly for what it says, and with someone like Anansi, because he is such an iconic African character and because he came out of this Ghanaian history and because he, in his story, survives the Middle Passage and such, I really wanted him to be a king. And purple is a very royal color. It’s one of the colors that we associate with nobility. And that was really my only request, but our costume designer is extraordinary. My only contribution was African prints, something that speaks to the true heritage of it. This is not Armani. This is not European. And my hope was that it would not be that way because it felt disingenuous to the character, it felt like we would’ve been homogenizing him. And that was important. I had no battle, everybody was like, “Yes! That’s what we think! Let’s do that!”
My original thought was, Oh, we’ll do different languages. We’ll do Xhosa, we’ll do Zulu, we’ll trick around. Then I thought, Well, mostly he’s going to be speaking English, so just let’s just toss out a word every now and then. I’m like, “This is Swahili for you, hey!” So I tried to really incorporate it into the way he normally speaks — his tone of voice and the sounds in his voice that you hear, sometimes will sound a bit Caribbean and sometimes will sound a bit African depending on what he’s saying to you. He doesn’t say fire, he goes fai-yah. I think that speaks to that heritage in that way, so I really tried to put it in his English and if, in fact, we get an opportunity to do more dialect than I did during Madiba this year, I’ll take it, but I think I’m done with my dialects this year.
Listen, I hope that [the scene] is laugh-out-loud hysterical to you. I really do. And then I hope afterwards, you think about that. It doesn’t simply apply to African-Americans. It applies to women. It applies to people who are disabled. It applies to cis and trans and there’s a thousand other categories that we haven’t even gone through. When I think about what that scene’s talking about, it’s really talking about the experience of having your human rights stripped from you and having people act like, “Oh, it’s cool! We gon’ get em to you. Hol’ on! Just wait till next year. It’s gon’ be cool.” So, that’s always a tough conversation and hopefully it was done in a way … I think Michael and Bryan, they are gorgeous writers. Beautiful artists, and truly people who believe that human rights is an important conversation for us to be in right now. It’s exciting to be attached to this type of work that’s speaking to these type of issues at this particular time. To be silent right now feels a little bit like being a coward in the fight of our lives.
‘American Gods’ Star Orlando Jones on Getting ‘Screwed Over’ and Speaking Out (EXCLUSIVE)
The "American Gods" star tells Variety he feels disrespected after being strung along by Fremantle, and yes, he and Gabrielle Union talked.
variety.com
Orlando Jones Says He Was Fired from 'American Gods,' Blames Showrunner
Orlando Jones is putting the new showrunner for "American Gods" on full blast ... saying he's responsible for getting the actor fired from the show.
www.tmz.com
‘American Gods’ Star Orlando Jones on Getting ‘Screwed Over’ and Speaking Out (EXCLUSIVE)
The "American Gods" star tells Variety he feels disrespected after being strung along by Fremantle, and yes, he and Gabrielle Union talked.
variety.com
Orlando Jones Says He Was Fired From ‘American Gods’ for Sending “Wrong Message for Black America”
Orlando Jones says he was fired from Starz's 'American Gods' in September, alleging that new showrunner Charles Eglee decided his character was sending "the wrong message for black America."
www.hollywoodreporter.com
‘American Gods’ Actor Orlando Jones Says He Was Fired Because Mr. Nancy Is ‘Wrong Message for Black America’
Orlando Jones has claimed that Season 3 showrunner Charles Eglee fired him because of Mr. Nancy's "angry, get sh-- done" attitude.
variety.com
I only saw clips of Orlandose character on the slave ship and was eager to watch the show but since they cancelled it,fuck them can.
They cancelled this and the other black cast show while fucking up koh.... I'm kinda dissatisfied with these companies and their wack ass decisions.
Being politically correct been tossed out of the window
They cancelled this and the other black cast show while fucking up koh.... I'm kinda dissatisfied with these companies and their wack ass decisions.
Being politically correct been tossed out of the window
Orlando Jones Wasn’t “Fired” From ‘American Gods’ Over Race, But Plot, Insists Producer Fremantle – UPDATE
He was on-screen, as well as writing & producing on the Starz's series based on Neil Gaiman's novel, now it seems Mr. Nancy is out the door
deadline.com
the same shit happend with sleepy hollow
Good interview
I meant orlando Jones got fired too
I'm going to work with him on a project. 
What is going on with her mouth/lips? After the commentary about the black woman goddess and she not even watching the show rubbed me the wrong way, I looked at her mouth & lips and decide somethings not right here... I'm kinda revolted.
