Kurt Sutter is now saying that his firing from Mayans M.C. by Disney had nothing to do with previously reported complaints to human resources from people involved in the show. In an interview with Deadline, the show’s creator talked about how things slowly unraveled. He began by admitting that he really didn’t want to do another motorcycle club show after Sons of Anarchy.
“I did not want to come back and do another MC show. Besides seeming like an admission of only possessing a single creative skill set, I felt like I’d told all the stories I had in that world,” Sutter said.
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“But FX was eager to capitalize on the IP and I had an interesting way into the world, so before I knew it, we were moving forward. I knew that a white guy shouldn’t be the voice of a Latin culture drama. So I brought on Elgin [James] and saw my primary creative responsibility as handling the transition from the SOA mythology to the Mayans mythology,” he continued.
Sutter said he thought Season 1 went well, but things started to fall apart during Season 2.
“Here’s what I did wrong on the production end in Season 2, the first season under the Disney regime. My plan was to hand off the day-to-day to Elgin by Season 3, and drop back into a hands-off producorial role,” he said.
“It was becoming more and more difficult for me to run this show. I was burned out, uninspired, I feared every idea was derivative. I was spending way too much time second-guessing story and reworking scripts. In the process, I put a greater burden on Elgin and my line producer, Jon Pare. Consciously or unconsciously, it allowed me to stick my head in the sand.”
Sutter went on to say that he has never been the type of showrunner who is on the set a lot, but in Season 2 of Mayans his presence was drastically decreasing. He believes the cast misinterpreted this as him abandoning them.
“I had no idea how badly the family bond we created in Season 1 was coming apart. That is a rookie mistake. And so, my bad. The other blowback it caused was with the cast. I’ve never been a showrunner who spends a lot of time on set. I’ve learned when I’m around, shit just slows down,” he said. “My presence was so greatly reduced, that some of my cast really felt my absence and understandably interpreted it as abandonment.
That’s when Sutter clarified what really got him fired. It had nothing to do with HR complaints, he claims.
“As misguided as those decisions were, none of those mistakes are that unusual and certainly not grounds for dismissal. I just want to be clear, I’ve learned that there were no HR claims regarding bad behavior of any kind,” he concluded.
