Man, those old tweets will land you in hot water. When stories like these break, celebrities often go rummaging through their old social media posts because they can certainly affect one’s career. The Flash actor Hartley Sawyer found himself to be a trending topic when his tweets from 2012 became the forefront of discussions.
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“The only thing keeping me from doing mildly racist tweets is the knowledge that Al Sharpton would never stop complaining about me,” Hartley Sawyer wrote in 2012. Two years later he tweeted, “Enjoyed a secret boob viewing at an audition today.” He also wrote, “Date rape myself so I don’t have to masturbate,” “As a lad, one of my favorite activities was kidnapping homeless women and cutting off their breasts,” and “Super Bowl! America! 80% of the prison population is African-American.”
The public put pressure on The Flash producers and the CW network to address Sawyer’s controversy. “Hartley Sawyer will not be returning for season seven of The Flash,” a statement from The CW, Warner Bros. TV, Berlanti Productions, and executive producer Eric Wallace reads. “In regards to Mr. Sawyer’s posts on social media, we do not tolerate derogatory remarks that target any race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, or sexual orientation. Such remarks are antithetical to our values and policies, which strive and evolve to promote a safe, inclusive and productive environment for our workforce.”
Later Hartley Sawyer issued this formal apology for his eight-year-old tweets: “My words, irrelevant of being meant with an intent of humor, were hurtful, and unacceptable. I am ashamed I was capable of these really horrible attempts to get attention at that time. I regret them deeply. This was not acceptable behavior. These were words I threw out at the time with no thought or recognition of the harm my words could do, and now have done today.”
