Actor Lena Waithe, the creator of "The Chi", has opened up about the firing of Jason Mitchell from the show over the allegations of sexual harassment, saying she should have taken a tougher stance in the matter.
Mitchell, who was accused of inappropriate behaviour by showrunner Ayanna Floyd Davis and co-star Tiffany Boone, was recently dropped from the show's upcoming third season.
Speaking at radio show "The Breakfast Club", Waithe said she was not aware of accusations against Mitchell until the first season had wrapped.
"When Tiffany and I did have a conversation, we did discuss things that just weren't appropriate and I was like, 'Yo, this is not cool. I feel awful that you had an experience on my set that was unpleasant,' and was like, 'Here's what I'm going to do to change that, I'm going to hire a woman of colour as the showrunner'," she said.
Waithe said that she roped in Davis hoping that having a female at the helm of the show would create a safe environment.
"I don't regret making a black woman a showrunner. I do regret trusting her to handle it all by herself," she said.
The actor said things became worse after Davis' hiring and that the set was "completely different".
"I get a call from Ayanna saying that things are persisting, not a lot has changed in that area, but you can't reach out, you've gotta sit tight, HR has to handle it. And my biggest regret is that I should have just said, 'Forget that,' and not trusted anybody to do my job and just reached out to Tiffany on my own, like, 'Yo, what's going on? What can I do? What can Lena do?' And instead, I trusted someone else to do my job," Waithe said.
The actor, however, said that Mitchell never acted inappropriately towards her.
"There was definitely a conversation where I called him and got really real. 'You need to be respectful of any woman on set. You need to be respectful of everybody. Don't treat any woman differently the way you would treat me'," she said.
Apart from "The Chi", Mitchell was also dismissed by Netflix from the upcoming film "Desperados" after the makers were informed about an off-set incident. His agency, UTA, has also expelled him.
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