14 Stars From ‘Criminal Minds,’ ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ & More Who Criticized Their Own TV Shows
More than a year after Jenna Ortega angered writers with her comments about Wednesday scripts — with some observers calling her “the new Katherine Heigl,” for reasons explained below — the actor said in a new interview that she could have articulated herself better.
Ortega and Heigl are just two of many TV actors who have criticized their own shows, though, and the list includes many men who have seemingly avoided the backlash these women got. And in some cases, the critiques seem justified!
Here are more than a dozen actors who, rightly or wrongly, bit the hand that fed them…
Jenna Ortega vs. Wednesday
In a March 2023 appearance on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert, Jenna Ortega said she rewrote scenes of the Netflix series Wednesday on the fly out of protectiveness for the titular character. “Everything that Wednesday does, everything I had to play, did not make sense for her character at all,” she lamented.
A year and a half later, she reflected on the ensuing controversy in an interview for Vanity Fair’s September 2024 cover: “I probably could have used my words better in describing all of that.”
Shailene Woodley vs. The Secret Life of the American Teenager
While playing teen mom Amy Juergens on the ABC Family drama The Secret Life of the American Teenager, Shailene Woodley grew resentful of the show’s content. “There were a lot of things that were written into the scripts that not just me, but a lot of the cast, disagreed with,” Woodley revealed in an April 2020 interview with Bustle, which noted the sex negativity on display on the show.
“There were belief systems that were pushed that were different than my own,” Woodley said. “Yet legally, I was stuck there. To this day, it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.”
Evangeline Lilly vs. Lost
In a July 2018 episode of the podcast The Lost Boys, Evangeline Lilly described her frustrations playing fugitive-turned-survivor Kate Austen on Lost. “At the beginning, she was kind of cool. And then as the show went on, I felt like she became more and more predictable and obnoxious,” Lilly said, per E! News. “I felt like my character went from being autonomous — really having her own story and her own journey and her own agendas — to chasing two men around the island. And that irritated the s**t out of me. … I did throw scripts across rooms when I’d read them.”
She also struggled with her treatment on the set of the hit ABC drama, she said. “In Season 3, I’d had a bad experience on set with being basically cornered into doing a scene partially naked, and I felt I had no choice in the matter. I was mortified, and I was trembling, and when it finished, I was crying my eyes out, and I had to go on to do a very formidable, very strong scene immediately thereafter,” Lilly recalled. “And so, in Season 4, another scene came up where Kate was undressing, and I fought very hard to have that scene be under my control, and I failed to control it again.”
Alexis Bledel vs. Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life
At an April 2017 panel for Netflix’s Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, Alexis Bledel didn’t sound thrilled about the miniseries-ending surprise that — spoiler alert — her character, Rory Gilmore, was pregnant.
“It certainly wasn’t the ending I expected,” Bledel said, per TVLine. “I had told [creator] Amy [Sherman-Palladino] that I hoped Rory would end on a high note after all of her hard work. I wanted to see her succeed and be thriving. So it was a hard thing for me to digest.”
John Rhys-Davies vs. Sliders
Talking to Digital Spy in February 2016, John Rhys-Davies (above left) said he endured “incomprehensible gibberish” with the scripts for the Fox-turned-Sci-Fi series Sliders, on which he played Professor Maximilian Arturo.
“I would go to [the writers] and complain,” Rhys-Davies told the site. “But they would say, ‘John, why don’t you just say the words as written?’ And I’d say, ‘I’ll tell you what, I will actually say the words as written when you can actually write intelligent sentences!’”
He elaborated: “It could’ve been still on the air, and they screwed up because they didn’t have the vision. I think it was the single biggest missed opportunity of my life. I regret it deeply. It was a lovely bunch of people to work with [in the cast], too. … You have to have writers who can write — and who understand that if you’re writing science fiction, you should have read some science fiction, and you should actually understand some science!”
Penn Badgley vs. Gossip Girl
After Gossip Girl’s head-scratching series-finale reveal that — spoiler alert — outsider student Dan Humphrey was the titular blogger the whole time, Penn Badgley objected to that twist for his character in a May 2015 interview with People. “It doesn’t make sense at all,” he said. “It wouldn’t have made sense for anybody. Gossip Girl doesn’t make sense!”
Two years earlier, he shaded Gossip Girl in a Salon interview as he discussed his film Greetings From Tim Buckley. “To be proud of something is a really nice feeling,” he said. “And it’s a new feeling, and it’s something that I wanna keep going with. I can walk a little taller, feeling that I don’t have to be constantly apologizing for the work that I’ve done in the past.”
Angus T. Jones vs. Two and a Half Men
In a November 2012 YouTube video, Angus T. Jones pleaded for fans to stop watching Two and a Half Men, on which he played teen Jake Harper, as he discussed his Christian faith. “I’m on Two and a Half Men. I don’t want to be on it,” he said. “Please stop watching it. Please stop filling your head with filth. Please. … You cannot be a true God-fearing person and be on a television show like that. I know I can’t.”
Jones addressed the video in a statement to Deadline the following day, saying, in part, “I am grateful to and have the highest regard and respect for all of the wonderful people on Two and Half Men with whom I have worked over the past 10 years. … I apologize if my remarks reflect me showing indifference to and disrespect [for] my colleagues and a lack of appreciation of the extraordinary opportunity [with] which I have been blessed. I never intended that.”
Chace Crawford vs. Gossip Girl
Chace Crawford didn’t mince his words in October 2012 when Us Weekly asked him about saying goodbye to the then-ending CW teen drama Gossip Girl. “I’m gonna look for my dignity,” he said. “My dignity is somewhere on set. I think it happened around season two. Leading into season three, it was all out the window.”
And in June 2020, Crawford, who played Upper East Side scion Nate Archibald on Gossip Girl, told Badgley in a Variety video that he couldn’t rewatch the series. “Buddy, you have to strap me to a gurney and pop my eyes open like [in] Clockwork Orange,” he said.
Chevy Chase vs. Community
Chevy Chase told The Huffington Post UK in September 2012 it was a “big mistake” to play millionaire Pierce Hawthorne on the NBC comedy Community, saying that sitcoms are “probably the lowest form of television.”
Then, 11 years later, Chase said on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast that Community “wasn’t funny enough” for him and he felt “a little bit constrained,” per Rolling Stone.
He added, “I just didn’t want to be surrounded by that table, every day, with those people. It was too much.”
Mandy Patinkin vs. Criminal Minds
Mandy Patinkin left Criminal Minds after Season 2 and told New York in an interview published in September 2012 that his “biggest public mistake” was agreeing to play Jason Gideon on the CBS procedural in the first place. “I thought it was something very different,” he explained. “I never thought they were going to kill and rape all these women every night, every day, week after week, year after year. It was very destructive to my soul and my personality.”
He went on: “I’m concerned about the effect it has. Audiences all over the world use this programming as their bedtime story. This isn’t what you need to be dreaming about.”
Billy Ray Cyrus vs. Hannah Montana
After costarring on Hannah Montana with daughter Miley, Billy Ray Cyrus claimed the “damn show destroyed [his] family,” in a GQ interview published online in February 2011.
“I’d take it back in a second,” he said of his choice to play Robby Ray Stewart opposite Miley as Miley Stewart on the Disney Channel series. “For my family to be here and just be everybody OK, safe and sound and happy and normal, would have been fantastic. Heck, yeah. I’d erase it all in a second if I could.”
The country singer backtracked on that statement the following month on The View. “I don’t think Hannah Montana ruined my family,” he said, per People. “Now fame, fame is a different animal. You’ve got to be careful with that thing.”
Sarah Michelle Gellar vs. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
At a March 2008 panel, Sarah Michelle Gellar explained her distaste for Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s sixth season, in which her eponymous character enters a toxic relationship with the vampire Spike (James Marsters), who eventually attempts to rape her.
“It was definitely tough for me. It’s so hard to separate myself from her, so it was tough for me to see these situations and think, ‘But Buffy wouldn’t do this…’ And I felt pressure from the force of the fans,” Gellar said, per IGN. “I know [the producers] talked me down from a ledge a couple of times, because it just felt so far removed for me at the time. And maybe that was the point — maybe I was struggling in the same way that she was struggling to find who she was. It just felt so foreign to me.”
Speaking about that season of the WB-turned-UPN hit in February 2023, she told Vogue, “To me, it wasn’t what the show was about. I didn’t enjoy filming season six. I didn’t enjoy watching season six [back]. It wasn’t the heart of who she was, to me.”
Katherine Heigl vs. Grey’s Anatomy
In June 2008, the year after her Grey’s Anatomy performance as Dr. Izzie Stevens won her a supporting actress Emmy, Katherine Heigl took her name out of Emmy contention, saying she “did not feel [she] was given the material” during that season of the ABC medical drama to warrant a nomination and she “did not want to potentially take away an opportunity from an actress who was given such materials,” as Entertainment Weekly reported at the time.
Recalling that controversy in a July 2024 episode of Shannen Doherty’s Let’s Be Real podcast, Heigl said she simply wasn’t proud of her work. “I would never be so bold or so arrogant to turn down a nomination,” she explained, per People. “I would take that nomination. If it came my way, I’d be down. … I was trying to be honorable, I guess. I was trying to have some integrity. I wasn’t trying to be a d–k.”
Johnny Depp vs. 21 Jump Street
Johnny Depp chafed in his role as undercover cop Tom Hanson on the Fox police drama 21 Jump Street — and he reportedly trashed his trailer in a bid to get fired. “It started to get a little show-boaty, you know what I mean?” he said in a July 2006 interview with The Telegraph, per ScreenRant. “It just started to become false. It started to become this action-packed can of soup, you know? You just market it, and send it out.”
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J
Mandy Patinkin said, "“thought it was something very different,” he explained. “I never thought they were going to kill and rape all these women every night, every day, week after week, year after year." ... That's one reason I never watched Criminal Minds: it's as if the writers tried every week to outdo the previous week and the horrible, sadistic actions they portrayed each week. I realize different people have different tastes in TV viewing, but that show really did seem to pander to the lowest behavior.
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C
I think every fan of Sliders agrees with John Rhys-Davies. The show started out well. It was smart. Then the network meddled and turned it into "just take current movies and put these characters in them."
They didn't even want to resolve a cliffhanger, claiming that a year later, the audience wouldn't remember or care - meaning they've never met any science-fiction fans.
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P
I think what we saw in Buffy S6 was a good reflection of what I've seen in people who suffer, for example, from PTSD. And the eventual payoff, just as one might hope for in RL, is that at its end the relationship was anything but toxic, with both characters finding their real truth. On another note: How in heaven's name did this article miss Keith Hamilton Cobb's very understandable dissatisfaction with how his Andromeda character's character and storyline were trashed when the lead actor got more contol of the show and, at least as it appeared to me, demanded/instilled a fundamentalist ethos that belied the openminded SFnal roots of such a show?
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C
I admire actors who fight against lines and scenes that don't reflect their character. I've watched too many shows where characters are suddenly doing things that their character would NEVER do, and that's because the writing is bad. In some shows, I can tell who the writer is who wrote an episode--or if it's written by a newbie writer--because main characters are SO out of character. That ruins the whole episode and finally ruins the show. When that happens, imo it's a failure of the showrunner(s). Actors should be given the respect to know their characters as well--often better--than writers who haven't created the characters and may have only been on staff for a short time. (Actors who felt the show or character was contrary to their personal beliefs should just quit.)
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B
I had issues with Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 6 during its original airing, too. It was hard to watch Buffy suffering so much and navigating through her bad choices. But I have watched it several times since and it has become one of my favorite seasons because it felt very true in how people often respond to trauma. It wasn't pretty or easy, but it was real.
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J
SMG is right about season 6.
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