Following the lead of Family Guy’s Seth MacFarlane—who followed up his tweet about being “embarrassed” to work for Fox with a $2.5 million donation to NPR and its L.A. affiliate, KPCC, earlier today—a growing chorus of Fox creatives are criticizing the company for its role in such craven lies as “it’s not an internment camp, it’s a summer camp” and “children in internment camps are all crisis actors” from Fox News.
Paul Feig and Judd Apatow are among those who have protested on Twitter, but Modern Family co-creator Steve Levitan is putting his contract where his keyboard is, following up on his tweet saying, “I’m disgusted to work at a company that has anything whatsoever to do with Fox News” by announcing that he isn’t renewing his overall deal with Fox Studios. (In a typically convoluted setup, Modern Family airs on ABC, but is produced by Fox.) He’ll follow through on his commitment to finish Modern Family, he says, but that’s it.
As The Wrap notes, it’s currently unclear whether the upcoming 10th season of Modern Family will be its last. With an awards chest stuffed with 22 Emmy awards and 75 nominations for the series, however, it’s safe to assume Levitan won’t have too much trouble setting up a show somewhere else, should he choose to do so.
UPDATE, 2:50 PM: Or maybe not. Just a few minutes after we initially published this story, and about an hour after his initial tweets, Levitan released a statement to Variety through his agent that says: “I have great respect and admiration for Dana Walden, Gary Newman, Peter Rice, and everyone at 20th Century Fox Studios who have all treated me so well for almost 2 decades. For now, I will take some time to see where those people land, and at that point, make a decision about my future.”