The Joss Whedon Abuse Controversy, Explained

Although Joss Whedon’s ex-wife, Kai Cole, published a detailed blog post in 2017 that accused him of infidelity and hypocrisy as a self-professed feminist, it wasn’t until July 2020 that he began facing claims of abusive on-set behavior from the people he worked with.

Without going into much detail, Ray Fisher, who played Cyborg in “Justice League” three years prior, took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to discuss the challenges he faced while working on the film. “Joss Wheadon’s [sic] on-set treatment of the cast and crew of Justice League was gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable,” he wrote, adding that the director was enabled by Jon Berg and Geoff Johns, who were then respectively serving as DC Entertainment president and Warner Bros. co-president of production. 

It was only in 2021 that Fisher truly elaborated on Whedon’s alleged actions, which purportedly included some racially motivated changes to Zack Snyder’s original “Justice League” script. He claimed that the director eliminated Cyborg’s relationship with his late mother and the rest of his backstory, which would eventually be seen in the film’s Snyder Cut. “It represents that his parents are two genius-level Black people,” Fisher told The Hollywood Reporter. “We don’t see that every day.” The actor also accused Whedon of being arrogant and dismissive when he and his co-stars questioned the myriad revisions to the “Justice League” script.