Fred Savage has been fired as executive producer and director of The Wonder Years reboot after an investigation into the inappropriate conduct allegations made against him.
“Recently, we were made aware of allegations of inappropriate conduct by Fred Savage, and as is policy, an investigation was launched,” a 20th Television spokesman said in a statement. “Upon its completion, the decision was made to terminate his employment as an executive producer and director of The Wonder Years.”
Deadline reported that the allegations included verbal outbursts and inappropriate behavior.
The ABC show is a reboot of the 1988 series of the same name, of which Savage was the star. The original The Wonder Years series ran from 1988 to 1993.
During its last season, a 31-year-old costume designer for the show, Monique Long, filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against the show’s young stars, Savage (who played Kevin Arnold), then 16, and Jason Hervey (who played older brother Wayne Arnold), then 20.
Long alleged that the actors verbally and physically harassed her, and because of that, she claimed, she couldn’t do her job properly and was fired. Representatives for the show and for the actors vehemently denied these allegations years ago.
Many years later in 2018, Alley Mills, who played Savage’s TV mom, Norma Arnold, told Yahoo that the 1993 sexual harassment suit was “completely ridiculous.” Mills called Savage “the least offensive, most wonderful, sweet human being that ever walked the face of the Earth.”
Mills claims that she “wasn’t allowed to talk” back then about the lawsuit, “which made me so upset. We had a gag order on us, and I wanted to scream on television, ‘This is ridiculous!’”
The lawsuit was dropped after an undisclosed out-of-court settlement was reached.
In 2018, Savage was the subject of another verbal harassment lawsuit. Younjoo Hwang, a wardrobe dresser for the Savage series, The Grinder, alleged that during her time on set in 2015 the actor created a hostile work environment with his “aggressive behavior, intimidation, and constant use of profanities aimed toward female employees [that] was left unchecked,” Variety reported.
20th Century Fox Television said that it found no evidence of any wrongdoing.
Yahoo has reached out to 20th Television for a statement regarding the 2022 allegations on the set of The Wonder Years.
