Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner is currently on tour, promoting his first novel, Heather, The Totality. Independent of the book’s merits—dubious as they may be—though, Weiner’s tour is reportedly going pretty poorly at the moment, largely on account of an accusation of sexual harassment that was levied against him last week.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, three of Weiner’s 11 stops on the tour have now been outright canceled, after his long-time collaborator Kater Gordon accused him last week of telling her she “owed it to him” to let him see her naked while they were working together on Mad Men. (A year after Weiner’s alleged comment, Gordon left the world of TV writing entirely.) Meanwhile, other events on the tour—like one at Powell’s Books in Portland, OR—saw participants or moderators drop out, with original host and radio personality David Naimon telling THR, “Once the news broke, I knew I couldn’t do the interview and pretend these allegations didn’t exist—not when Weiner’s book, like his show, dramatizes certain masculine psychologies within a larger climate of sexism.” Others (i.e., those where the organizers didn’t take measures to control participants’ questions) were swamped with queries about Weiner’s behavior, all of which have been met with flat denials that he ever made the comment in question.
Weiner’s next (and final) promotional event for Heather, The Totality is scheduled for tomorrow night. He’ll be siting down in Los Angeles for a conversation with his friend and collaborator, Orange Is The New Black’s Jenji Kohan.