Brett Gelman claims the reason he cut off contact with Adult Swim was due to the adult animation programming block’s lack of female creators.
Gelman, an actor and comedian who worked on Adult Swim shows “Eagleheart” and “Hot Package,” posted a write up of a recent reddit post from Adult Swim creative director Mike Lazzo discussing comments he made about women. Gelman captioned the tweet with, “This is the reason I have severed ties.”
https://twitter.com/brettgelman/status/797980003539394560
Adult Swim declined TheWrap’s request for comment.
Lazzo was accused of sexism after the recently announced slate of new Adult Swim projects did not include a single female creator. Lazzo was also accused of saying that women create “conflict” in writers’ rooms.
“What I actually said was-women don’t tend to like conflict, comedy often comes from conflict, so that’s probably why we (or others) have so few female projects,” Lazzo said on reddit. “Nonetheless this was a dumb answer to a good question as Lucille Ball and Gilda Rather to Amy Poelher and Amy Schumer prove my statement a load of generalized nonsense.”
“If unnamed sources want to complain, complain about me after I’ve read the script you asked me to read or tossed you out of my office for pitching something I didn’t like,” he continued. “If you did come to me I bet I offered some decent suggestions on how to accomplish whatever you wanted to do.”
Adult Swim was created in 2001 as a late night edition of Cartoon Network. Early hits included animated shows like “Space Ghost: Coast to Coast” and “Aqua Teen Hunger Force.” They have also launched several live shows, including “Children’s Hospital” and “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!”