Jeff Garlin's character on "The Goldbergs" will be dead when the 10th season of the sitcom premieres on ABC next month.
In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, showrunners Chris Bishop and Alex Barnow explained how they wrote Garlin's Murray Goldberg, the patriarch of the Goldberg family, out of the show. The latest season of "The Goldbergs" is set to debut nearly a year after Garlin departed the program following a human resources investigation into his behavior on set.
"[Garlin is] not going to be on the season, obviously," Barnow told Entertainment Weekly in a Q&A published Tuesday.
"[Murray] will have passed, and we are sort of starting from a place of multiple months removed from his death. The family has already grieved. ... This is going to be a family that has not reconciled the fact that their father's gone but has sort of moved on and has dealt with a lot of that. ... It's an opportunity for this interesting emotional basis for the way people are behaving. But Jeff won't be in the series this year, and so far the stories have been largely about looking forward rather than looking back."
Barnow added that he has informed Garlin that "he's not being replaced" by another actor.
"I don't know if he knows what his fate is, but I'm assuming he knows," the writer and executive producer said. "We haven't had a subsequent conversation since the beginning of writing that he would have any specific clarity on that."
In December 2021, Vanity Fair reported that Garlin had allegedly engaged in a pattern of verbal and physical conduct that made some of his co-workers uncomfortable behind the scenes of "The Goldbergs."
He was accused of behaving in a demeaning or unprofessional manner, as well as using language that some considered inappropriate and degrading to women. Garlin also reportedly touched or hugged people on set regardless of whether they were comfortable with it.
In the Vanity Fair interview, Garlin described his on-set behavior as "silliness," while acknowledging that he can be a "loose canon" at work. He chalked the HR investigation up to "a difference of opinion" between him and the production company, Sony Pictures Television.
"I make mistakes, sure. But my comedy is about easing people's pain," Garlin said at the time. "Why would I ever want to cause pain in anybody for a laugh? That's bullying. That's just uncalled for."
The 60-year-old "Curb Your Enthusiasm" star also made clear to Vanity Fair that his exit from the "Goldbergs" was mutually agreed upon by him and Sony. In other words, he was not fired from the show.
"I didn't want to come back. I'd had my fill of it," Garlin said. "And also I was very disgusted by the whole HR thing of the past few years. But I love the crew. I love everybody I work with."
The 10th season of "The Goldbergs" — starring Wendi McLendon-Covey, Sean Giambrone, Hayley Orrantia, Sam Lerner and Troy Gentile — premieres Sept. 21 on ABC.
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