How Tom Ellis Saved ‘Lucifer’ From Cancellation

If it wasn’t for Tom Ellis, Lucifer might not have been picked up by Netflix. The fantasy procedural dramedy ran on Fox for three seasons before the network ultimately canceled it. However, just a month later, it was announced that Netflix had picked it up for a fourth season. The streamer later renewed it for what was supposed to be its fifth and final season. Then, even more time later, Netflix picked it up for one more season, with Lucifer in 2021. It wasn’t so easy to get picked up, however.

Ellis appeared on Michael Rosenbaum’s Inside of You podcast, where he talked about the show’s initial cancellation. He admitted that he was at a convention in Rome the weekend he had gotten the news. Fox wanted to announce a new show at the same time they were announcing the cancellation, so Ellis decided to break the news himself and announced it on social media. The actor said that he received a “tsunami of love” from fans after announcing the cancellation, “and it didn’t stop.”

“Eventually, l got a call later that weekend from a guy called Peter Roth, who was head of Warner Bros. TV. Warner Bros. was our studio, and they made it for Fox,” Ellis explained. “And he said, ‘Tom, I want you to know, we’re not ignoring all this stuff that’s happening on social media. We are gonna try and do something about it.’ And so I said, ‘What do you need me to do?’ And he said, ‘Can you get over here to LA, keep soaking the fire as it was?’ So I got myself to Heathrow Airport, and I had a message from BBC News Night. And they said that they had been noticing what was happening on social media… about the show. Did I want to appear as a guest on the show to talk about that and to talk about television changing and all these things, and I was like, ‘Absolutely.’”

“So I got to LA, and then I ended up doing like a studio bit back to London about this, and for the next kind of week and a half, two weeks, it just became like all I talked about, and all people were asking me about,” Ellis continued. “And then, you know, a couple weeks later, I’d sort of been tipped off from Peter that things were progressing well and then we got the Netflix announcement and it was the most vindicating, wonderful experience and I didn’t feel quite so bad about pressing send on that tweet.”

While the fan campaigns for Lucifer definitely had a hand in the series getting picked up by Netflix, it seems that Tom Ellis taking matters into his own hands kickstarted it all. The fact that the series managed to go for three additional seasons on the streamer is impressive, and it was able to close out on its own terms after it nearly ended again. Not all fan campaigns are successful, but it’s always exciting when they are.