Peter Lenkov Fired at CBS; MacGyver, Magnum P.I. and Former H50 Boss Accused of Workplace Misconduct
CBS has fired prolific producer Peter M. Lenkov, whose current shows include MacGyver and Magnum P.I., following an investigation into claims that the showrunner created a toxic work environment, according to THR.
“Peter Lenkov is no longer the executive producer overseeing MacGyver and Magnum P.I., and the studio has ended its relationship with him,” a CBS TV Studios spokesperson tells TVLine in a statement. “Monica Macer will be the showrunner on MacGyver and Eric Guggenheim will run Magnum P.I. Both are currently executive producers on their respective series.
“Our studio is committed to ensuring safe and respectful production environments,” the statement continued. “Over the past year, we have assigned human resource production partners to every show, expanded staff training and increased reporting options. We will continue to evolve our practices with continued focus on building trust with all who work on our sets. Every complaint is taken seriously, every claim is investigated, and when evidence is clear that policies were violated and values not upheld, we take decisive action.”
In his own statement, Lenkov — who also presided over CBS’ recently wrapped, 10-season reboot of Hawaii Five-0 — said, “Now is the time to listen and I am listening. It’s difficult to hear that the working environment I ran was not the working environment my colleagues deserved, and for that, I am deeply sorry. I accept responsibility for what I am hearing and am committed to doing the work that is required to do better and be better.”
Per THR, Lenkov was the subject of at least three complaints alleging that he was manipulative and abusive during Hawaii Five-0‘s decade-long run as well as on his MacGyver reboot, which is heading into Season 5.
Well, if this isn’t as vague as a story gets. Kinda pointless to even report on it, no?
Well, at least we know he’s no longer in that position. At least that’s noteworthy – until the other shoe drops!
what do you mean “at least we know” – as if it really means anything or matters to the general public ??? or as if most people even had a clue to who he was before reading this
99% of people will just say … ok .. and move on and not really give a shit
No. That will be the reaction most of them have to what they may or may not realize is you describing them as uncaring.
I, on the other hand, have long believed we need to state truths in far more than just advertising.
Much the same way we know the fictional stories we enjoy are put together by groups of real people, we may not have known those people were having issues in the past, but all will feel better knowing those negative experiences have likely ended.
I’m only sorry Hawaii Five-0 lost Park and Kim before Lenkov was finally dumped!
How is reporting someone getting fired and replaced as showrunner on 2 shows.vague or pointless?
It looks like they clipped the first few paragraphs from the Hollywood Reporter article, but didn’t include the ones that describe what this guy actually did.
Looking forward to Michael Weatherly getting the same treatment.
Probably not gonna happen b/c he in Bull. Whereas Lenkov can be replaced without any disruption.
Not that this defends MW’s actions, but he seemed to have been a jerk to 1 or 2 people. This SEEMS to be a case of an exec producer being a jerk to most of the people on set. And from the sounds of this, reading between the lines, it seems like this producer was treating the crew badly, in addition to along with various cast members.
.
Again, not excusing MW’s alleged behavior, but it seems he was mean to an incredibly small number of coworkers. If that was a fire-able offense, unemployment would be in the high 90s, percentage wise.
I wholeheartedly agree with you Patrick.
As do I. Well said.
If they were gonna go it,they would’ve done it -they did themselves of Charlie Rose,Les Moonves,Brad Kern etc .But about Micheal not a pep from them and they paid Eliza off .
I agree wholeheartedly about Michael Weatherly. Why no one has done anything about him and his show continues to get renewed while other great shows are cancelled is beyond me. He must be paying someone off.
I wonder if it’s irony: He acts like that due to feeling licensed after his “NCIS” time, & he is, because they assume people see him as a talented actor and don’t know/care how he is/was off-camera.
A family member always tells me they’re “going to watch ‘Bull'”, and we laugh because I believe the title fits the character and the actor.
Anyone know if Chris Jackson might use his reborn “Hamilton” fame to get a new show for himself, Eliza, maybe Annabelle or Pauley, and other possible past victims?!
victims ???
Use dictionary.com to define the word, perhaps this very site to find reports of the incidents brandy…/I’m referring to,…
He got off… if they were going to do something, they would have already. The showing will be hitting number 100 if production resumes.
Not gonna happen … Weatherly and his show should be long gone after everything that surfaced. But he’s still there. Don’t believe for one second that everyone is getting the same treatment. A producer is much easier to get rid of too.
Yeah, but a producer of high-quality material. We can’t rid of just his mouth, and he hasn’t produced any high-quality material that didn’t include “NCIS” in its title.
Wow. I bet the story will be updated or there will be additional stories as more information comes to light.
To quote Buffy, “Can you vague that up for me?”
There is more details at another site. Sounds like we really know why they probably ended Hawaii 5-O, so suddenly, when they did, and it wasn’t necessarily actors availability or contracts. If he was under investigation for the last year over three complaints.
Hawaii Five-O ended because the actor who played Alex Laughlin was injured several times doing his own stunts and it came to the point where he was in too much pain to go for another season. The actor who played Danny didn’t want to do the show without McGarrett, so the series ended.
I know. But the end came very suddenly. Announced within a few episodes of the end. If this has been under investigation for months,than it makes me wonder if there were more reasons for the end of the show. It could be the Alex situation because Lenkow is on record having wanted to continue the show, and it sounded like CBS is the one who ended it. So it does make you wonder if these allegations helped it along.
No. No, it really doesn’t. Speculation with no basis at all helps no one.
We don’t know either way, so yes, it’s speculation. Unless someone speaks. All we are doing is wondering…
It’s a solid question. They made a hire to introduce a character in those final shows that were identified as possible lead, were the show to continue minus McGarrett & Danno. The wheels were definitely in motion to keep 5-0 running. . . until the 11th hour anyway.
Laughlin had a very, very scary operation. No doubt his family members have been after him for some time to leave the show.
If you look at how few episodes he’d been in the last few seasons I’d say Caan didn’t want to be there long before saying not without O’Loughlin
Caan never moved to Hawaii. He commuted back and forth from LA, so he could be with his family.
You could NOT be more wrong. He had an amazing stunt double that did most of Alex’s stunts for years. Clearly you do not know what you are talking about.
Lisa you’re wrong and the other poster is tight.Akex hurt his back doing stunts years ago and got addicted to pain pills so much that he eventually went to rehab and for years was saying he was ready to move on from this shoe.Until he got a stem cell therapy that helped.But he and Scott do some of thier own stunts ,not all are done by doubles.You can even google articles about Alex’s injury and rehab and all that( this site reported on it).Maybe now a stunt double does more of his stunts than in the beginning but still…
Lisa, obviously, you don’t know what you’re talking about either– Brandy know the truth..
I’m surprised that a firing that doesn’t involve a ‘p*nis’ even got reported.
He was fired for being a great big knob, if that counts?
Are you kidding?! That should make him President of the network, if not the country!
This is such a shame. I’m big fan of his shows, they won’t be be same without him.
you seriously believe that ??? the team of writers make the show – these shows will presumably be exactly the same and I doubt anyone will be able to tell any differences
Being responsible for vapid procedural reboots should be a crime in and of itself.
But this one had Alex O’Loughlin and great cinematography of spectacular scenery, so it was quite watchable, especially with the volume way down low. Now, if Magnum could hire the person responsible for choosing H50’s picturesque scenery, that would go a long way towards improving a truly vapid reboot.
1] The scenery is because it’s Hawaii.
2] Scott Caan and his partners are each better than Alex.
TChurch: We all have an opinion. Scott is a good actor, but Alex is better.
If “we all have an opinion”, why did you also feel the need to intentionally state your opposite one? Maybe because you felt nobody would think to have it but you.
I can’t place it, but I remember when the first of Clooney’s “Ocean” remakes was being released. Another cast member introduced a clip referencing what James Caan’s son would be doing.
Answer? Better than Alex, and visibly, being that it’s a remake of an established franchise.
1 Ocean’s trilogy was what it was because of George Clooney and Brad Pitt certainly NOT because of Scott Caan.
2 Alex O’Loughlin was five 0. He put all of his heart, soul and injured himself during the filming of the series. Scott Caan was more scared of his hair being out of place than getting injured and don’t get me started on his hair during the last season. All I wanted to do everytime I saw him was to take a razor to finish the job.
3 Alex O’Loughlin is renowned for being a kind, considerate and welcoming to his fans and has said constantly that without the fans, they wouldn’t be were they were. Scott Caan couldn’t even say thank you to an Irish fan that had brought it thousands of miles just to give him. That was when he lost the remaining balance of any support that I may have had for him.
For me Alex has always shown himself to be a man, an actor worthy of the fans he has.
Ps he’s also been lead man in more shows and movies than Scott Caan!
Now shove that up your pipe and smoke it and leave Alex O’Loughlin alone. TChurch you aren’t worthy enough to be the dirt under his shoes!
Abusive could mean anything from raising his voice at someone to attacking them with a stapler. Hope we get more specifics at some point. He wasn’t running the day to day on these last two shows as it is, so I don’t think it will have much effect on things.
“Sources say Lenkov had been the subject of at least three complaints alleging that he was manipulative and abusive during Hawaii Five-0’s 10-season run and on the current hit MacGyver (with the latter heading into its fifth season in the fall). He allegedly had a “boys club” that included favored male employees who regularly gathered, smoked cigars and inappropriately judged the appearance of women in Hawaii. Others allege that he accommodated special work-schedule requests from male actors without offering similar consideration to actresses on Hawaii Five-0. The series, a reboot of the iconic procedural, concluded its run in April.
“It was a hard place to be a woman on that set,” one source said of the former Oahu set of Hawaii Five-0.
Behind the scenes, sources allege Lenkov would routinely talk down to writers — particularly women and people of color. In one incident, he allegedly mocked a disabled fan and, after a writer objected to his behavior, attempted to have her fired.”
If you click on the THR link up there, there is a bit more to the story.
I’m assuming the “boys club” thing must have been on set or at the office. Otherwise I’m not sure how it would be applicable..As to the rest, it may offer a good explanation as to the regular turnover of female characters. One that goes beyond the strain of shooting so far from the mainland.
Doesn’t matter, IMO. Taking all the boys to talk about work on the golf course, while excluding their female counterparts is just as obnoxiously exclusive as sitting around the office in a toxic manner. Try being the only one who’s missed the change in plans that was decided between the 10th & 11th holes the other day. . . or the only one not laughing at the inside jokes about that sand trap on the 14th. Just as an example. Women have been dealing with the consequences of being excluded from those informal work gatherings for decades now.
It may be unfair, in the schoolyard sense, to exclude anyone from an informal work gathering, but it’s still outside the work space. And this is assuming that business is even up for discussion. If Women in an office want to have an informal gathering, would it be permissible for Male Co-Workers to insinuate themselves because they feel left out. I can’t speak to the specifics of this situation, as there are few given, but generally speaking, sometimes guys like to hang out with guys and women like to hang out with women. Not
Everything we do in life has to jump hurdles of equanimity. How can it be mandated. Say these gatherings happened at Mr. Lenkov’s home. A group of Men playing Poker and smoking cigars. Is the request for female inclusion in this scenario or for it to be prohibited? Prohibited is tricky. People meet many of their friends at work and telling them they can’t hang out together in their off hours, is problematic. Forcing inclusion in personal matters is also challenging. What does that look like? Since it’s a private affair, what’s to stop it from just ending. How does the whole scene not just devolve into awkward tension? Is it a matter of actually wanting to be there or is it just about being asked? There had to be more to this than just some post-work dude-bro hang-out. Otherwise I just can’t see the relevance in a firing.
The truth is we will never get the full story of what actually transpired. Enjoy because this is the insane environment we’ve created. With all the Me2 virtue signalers out there, I’m sure any criminal or objectively offensive behavior would be used to publicly shame Lenkov from any variety of crew working on his shows.
This SOUNDS like another cancel culture personal attack on the man simply because of perceived biases and certain cast members being upset about being excluded.
Lenkov likely committed the cardinal sin of attempting to assert his right to bond with men in a private setting. Instead of respecting his right to hang out with whomever he chooses, the “excluded” ones chose to respond emotionally and once again try to make it about themselves. So they spread their own gossip around, looked for anything to be offended about, and let their own internal insecurities and anger drive their motives in generating complaints designed to punish the man for wrongthink.
The hypocrisy, kowtowing to radicals, and dehumanization of anyone outside the hive mind will continue to intensify if we keep heading down this road. It’s fine for any number of “protected groups” to self segregate and shove their idealogy down everyone else’s throats, but it’s not ok for men to gather by themselves and hang out during their free time?
KatsMom, exactly! This info lends credence to the comment Grace Park maybe, re: “the boys’ club” (when SHE finally spoke up)!
Yikes! Another quote from the THR article. “”He isn’t racist or sexist or classist singularly — it’s all of it,” says an insider. “He’s anti-woman, anti-POC, anti-gay, and everything you’d expect. But he’d also torture straight white men if he felt like it.”
So he’s basically a misanthropic sadist? Fun Guy.
We used to just call these people huge A-holes and move on with what we can control in our own lives. Nowadays I guess we can criminalize someone elses behavior and take away their livelihood without any concrete objectively factual evidence. A group of people can subjectively decide they are offended and simply continue whining about it loud enough and wide enough to get someone, who has managed tens of thousands of different people over a long and successful career, essentially blacklisted from ever working in the industry again.
Makes a lot of sense…
This guy has had it coming for years. So many writers, actors, post people, crew can tell you stories about what an assh*le he is. Glad the tide is turning against the bully.
Being an asshole isn’t illegal. Where are all the exposes on Hollywood casting couch practicrs, or the sexual exploitation of underage actors? What about a deep dive into communist China’s ownership of Hollywood and all the censorship they require for investment? Etc etc
Someone being a bully is NEVER a good enough reason to destroy 100s/1000s of jobs and destroy someone’s career forever. Why do people think the personal opinions of one group of people gives them the right to declare another individuals rights null and void in perpetuity?
Maybe with his free time he can now try and come up with an original idea.
Well, at least the two taking over were EPS, so hopefully the shows won’t miss a beat. The MacGyver/Magnum one-two punch is fun tv.
Prolific producer, my foot. Peter Lenkov was an overrated hack who was incapable of coming up with an original idea of his own. His three signature shows were refakes of shows other people had created.
this sucks ! I have been enjoying all of his producing ! is this the real reason Hawaii 5-0 was not renewed ?
It’s too bad psychology and therapy has such a fear attached to it. I know from my own family life, going back to 54 years of struggling and failing to get people not to fear using it. As a matter of fact, it has been about the same years with different workplace people and issues. That was after my first 18 years of total f…ed up life, with no intervention. So, here I am a wantabe in the writing and acting tracks in this field that continues the fear of stigma … because there is a stigma! Come on TV field, you are smarter than this. Learn to drag your associates into facing and changing things.
If anyone has read his Twitter feed, all the allegations against him certainly makes sense. While pleasant to fans who showed off their fandom of his shows, Lenkov also focused a lot of his attention on those who said anything negative about him or his shows, sometimes going hard at them over multiple tweets. The allegations also sort of back up what several actors and actresses have said that led to them leaving shows run by him.
Good
Maybe the (reboots, aka= Hollywood can’t come up with money ideas) will be cancelled
To be fair, these are not exactly the same as the old shows. They have different racial & gender representations, updated tech, etc.
While we’re making/suggesting changes, why not clean all shows of backstage legal issues, or “on too long”, etc. (“Bull”, any of the “Law & Order”/”NCIS”/”reboots”)?
Hey, as long as the viewers love the shows, keep them on! Every Friday night the husband bemoans having to live without his weekly Hawaii 5-O. I need my Magnum! And we both hope MacGyver stays.
I like the current Magnum and Higgins, but wonder when Richard will guest star & replace this Mac.
He can deal it out but can’t take it. I made a gentle recommendation to get better firearms consultant on H5o. Instead of a dialogue – he blocked me.
Karma, Mr Lenkov.
There was a dialogue. That’s where you Cut and Paste the story from.
Prove me wrong: Post a screen cap of your name in the credits and proof it’s you.
Karma was the second word I thought of when I saw this headline (first was schadenfreude). He came off as such an arrogant jerk in interviews/on Twitter that I can’t say I’m surprised.
I wondered why two Asian actors left Hawaii 50 after all it is about the local people on the islands!
Before there was clear indication in articles that salaries were not equal, and they felt [insulted?].
Impossible to judge based on the information given. What did he do? Demand his employees actually work for their money? Or was he a monster?
So is Hawaii 5 O coming back, if there are changes, because that was one of my favorites
Super done.
Growing up I used to really enjoy Magnum and 5-0, but the Lenkov produced reboots are nothing but pale, dumbed down versions of the originals. I watched a season of each to give it a fair shot, but it just wasn’t happening. Some reboots can be very good. With Lemkov, it just didn’t happen. Hopefully with his departure, the scripting and production of Magnum will improve.
I wonder if they’ll take it as a compliment being called “dumbed down ” by someone who spells a surname (that’s included in the headline) 2 different ways.
As for me, I’ll just call it “2 negatives = a positive,” as I for one have enjoyed what I’ve seen of both, and am only curious when the “Blue Blood” might find a way to appear (maybe sans ‘stache) to officially give his blessing to “Millennial Magnum”.
Peter Lenkov didn’t cancel H5-O; CBS did! What’s truly disappointing is that CBS seems to allow bad behavior by many producers/executives, until the media gets hold of the story! Lenkov is not the only executive who has caused toxic problems! CBS network execs are just finally stepping up, to do something about certain situations!
Please bring back Hawaii 5-0
Nothing personal, but I figured someone had to post somewhere that this article is about Lenkov being removed (& the reason why), & the show had/has already aired its finale regardless.
Alexlover 76, glad someone spoke up about S. Caan! Not a team player. Didn’t attend the “Sunset on the Beach” ceremonies, in Oahu; not in attendance when H5-O cast members were in L.A. for Paleyfest (Dolby Theater, 23 March 2019); bad-mouthed the series during Season one (many Hawaii residents wanted Caan fired!), etc. I’m a fan of Alex O’, as well!