‘Black-ish’ Creator Kenya Barris Blames Trump For Scrapped Episode

Barris told The Breakfast Club that the episode went through “all the checks and balances” for approval before being scrapped. At the time, The Walt Disney Company and Twenty-First Century Fox Inc were discussing a merger, which was initiated in December 2017. 

Trump praised the acquisition at the time, but Barris implies the president likely would not have approved the merger if the episode had aired as intended. 

“They were afraid that he was petty enough to not, if we aired it, let the merger go through,” Barris said. He also mentioned during the interview that he was “audited” in 2018, during Trump’s first term.

“Little things that you’re like, ‘Is this an accident?’ They’re coming back, they’re attacking. They feel like they’re in a different place, and they feel like they can do whatever they want,” Barris said.

Following this, the Black-ish creator stepped down as the series’s showrunner and left ABC. But while Barris moved on, actors Anthony Anderson and Tracee Eliss Ross — who portrayed Andre and Rainbow, respectively — stayed on, but in fear.

Ross reportedly called the decision to scrap the episode “frightening” in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. Anderson was also skeptical of behind-the-scenes meddling and suggested the decision was a personal affront from executives to Barris. 

“He’d given his blood, sweat and tears to [the episode], which they had signed off on every step of the way — from the outline, to the script, to the table read, to the point where they actually spent the money and made the episode,” Anderson told the outlet. “And I don’t know what those conversations were, but we entered into this partnership with the understanding that we would be able to tell the stories that we wanted to tell.”

ABC renewed the series for its eighth and final season in May 2021, with the series finale airing on April 19, 2022.

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