Danny Field/©ABC/Courtesy The Everett Collection
Wendi McLendon-Covey said in a recent interview with Andy Cohen for SiriusXM that Jeff Garlin’s departure from The Goldbergs was “a long time coming.” The two comedians helmed the ABC sitcom from its debut in 2013 until December 2021, when Garlin was fired from the show after a series of HR investigations over his alleged misconduct on set.
“It’s been a long time coming,” McLendon-Covey said. “Finally it happening was like, ‘OK, finally someone is listening. But that was quite difficult because we lost George Segal in real life. Having to suffer another loss on a sitcom… you can’t keep asking your audience to mourn people. That’s why they don’t get involved.”
When Cohen asked if Garlin’s departure from the show was the result of complaints over a long period of time, McLendon-Covey replied, “Yes.”
“If we couldn’t talk about it, that would be great,” she then asked politely. “I’m exhausted from this topic and the whole post-traumatic stress disorder. I just feel like the less people know about it the better. Nobody benefits from knowing anything.”
The Goldbergs was in the middle of filming Season 9 when Garlin was fired. He did not finish his work for the remainder of the season, forcing the production team to devise methods to keep his character on the show in a reduced capacity.
As Variety exclusively reported, the producers decided to keep Garlin’s character on the show, using off-camera dialogue and unused takes from previous episodes, as well as previously captured images of Garlin. The actor’s deputy was also used in group scenes, but he was shot from behind. The end result was visually awkward and garnered so many complaints on social media that McLendon-Covey even intervened at the time.
“This season threw us off course because it’s difficult to fit someone who doesn’t want to be there and walk in the middle of the scene and we didn’t want to rewrite the second half of the season,” the comedian wrote on Twitter at the time. “We give our best.”
As The Goldbergs entered its tenth and final season last fall, the show killed off Garlin’s character. The Goldbergs series finale airs on ABC in May.