TNT’s The Alienist adaptation has experienced some setbacks on its way to production, beginning with Cary Fukunaga departing the project more than a year after he signed on. Now it looks the show, from executive producers Steve Golin and Rosalie Swedlin, has just lost one of its purported stars. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Emile Hirsch was all set to join Dakota Fanning, Luke Evans, and Daniel Brühl in the cast in some unknown role. But Hirsch was ultimately unable to close the deal with Paramount TV, which is producing the show along with Turner Studios, and it’s probably his own fault.
You might recall that Hirsch pled guilty to assaulting (to put it mildly) former Paramount VP Dani Bernfield in 2015. She’s since moved on to Chernin Entertainment, but THR has learned that some of Bernfield’s former coworkers at Paramount chose to “speak out against [Hirsch’s] hiring, proposing a decision that favored corporate responsibility amid a cultural shift and renewed focus on women’s rights and gender equality in the wake of events such as the Women’s March on Washington.” Now, this is just based off unnamed sources; Paramount wouldn’t comment on the deal falling through. Still, we have to wonder what kind of balls you have to walk back into a studio, asking for a job, after choking one of its former VPs—in full view of Sundance attendees—until she blacked out.