Hours before being fired from FX, Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter was spending the day at the Disneyland Resort. The Emmy nominated writer and producer was reportedly fired by the Disney-owned network after executives received “multiple complaints” about his behavior while working on his SOA spin-off, Mayans M.C., Sutter described himself as being an “abrasive d–.”
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On Wednesday, Sutter posted a photo from Disney’s California Adventure Park, located right near Disneyland. “The happiest place on earth,” Sutter wrote in the caption.
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Sutter disabled commenting on the post, but more than 3,300 of his fans liked it.
Hours before that post, Sutter shared a black and white photo of himself. “It’s Tuesday, motherf–. Time to get messy,” he wrote in the caption.
On Thursday, sources told The Hollywood Reporter Sutter’s behavior drew “multiple complaints.” Sutter then sent a letter to the Mayans M.C. cast and crew about his firing at the hands of FX CEO John Landgraf and Disney TV Studios and ABC Entertainment chairman Dana Walden, and described himself as an “abrasive d–.”
Sutter, FX and 20th Century Fox Television have not commented on his firing yet.
Sutter’s management style has been controversial in the past, and he has embraced that reputation. In September 2018, he told THR he had a framed letter from executives that described his “unprofessional behavior” on Sons of Anarchy.
“The reason why that letter was hung up in the first place and the reason why it’s still there is not about, like, ‘F– you, I’m a bad a–,’ it’s about ‘I’m a f– idiot and that behavior creates f– lawsuits,” Sutter explained at the time.
Despite the potential workplace culture clash after Disney took over 20th Century Fox Television, Sutter renewed his contract in January 2018. Sutter told THR he spoke with Landgraf and Walden about how his behavior would fit with Disney.
“It was just a conversation about, ‘This is the current climate, we don’t suspect that you’re going to sabotage anything, but we need to do the due diligence,” Sutter told THR in September 2018. “And at first it was disconcerting because I’m like, ‘What does that mean? Does it mean there’s a new watchdog on my shoulder?’ And it didn’t mean any of that. It was basically, ‘We know who you are, we know what you can do, we have to make sure that when new entities come in that we can vouch for [you]. And at the very least we can say we have had this conversation.’”
Sutter continued, “Then there was, in a very politically delicate way, a, ‘Are there any skeletons in your closet that are gonna come back and bite us in the a–?’ And I was like, ‘Well, as far as I know, I didn’t Weinstein anybody. I may have upset people, I may have said inappropriate things, but there was not [any of that].’ But again, they needed to do the due diligence. And as Landgraf says, ‘It’s a different climate and you have to acknowledge it and be aware of it and move in step with it.’”
Mayans M.C. is now in its second season. Sutter co-created the series with Elgin James, who was already set to take over the creative reins solo if the show is renewed for a third year.
Photo credit: Rich Polk/Getty Images for IMDb
