Father Ted creator loses TV career and marriage and on anxiety medication over tweets
Father Ted #FatherTed
Graham Linehan, the creator of hit comedies Father Ted and the IT Crowd, has spoken out about losing his career and marriage after sharing a series of tweets about the transgender community.
The 54-year-old rose to prominence for co-creating sitcom Father Ted in 1995 and Black Books in 2000 – later writing The IT Crowd.
He had planned a Father Ted musical, but he later claimed it had been cancelled by producers over his divisive tweets on transgender rights.
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Linehan had began tweeting his views after his testicular cancer operation in 2018 and in 2020, he was permanently banned from the social media site after airing his divisive views.
He had reportedly tweeted “Men aren’t women tho” after the Women’s Institute sent a Happy Pride message to its transgender members.
Linehan’s Twitter was later reinstated after Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media platform late last year.
However, in a new interview, the comedic writer has opened up about the toll his controversial tweets took as he claimed his life fell apart in the backlash, with his wife leaving him and his glittering comedy career grinding to a halt.
He was married to the writer Helen Serafinowicz, with whom he shares a son.
The pair split in 2021, which he said was a “direct result” of his tweets.
In an interview with The Times, Linehan said his marriage ended after his wife was “targeted” over his tweets – with her home address released online by angry social media users.
Linehan said: “She was scared. She was justifiably scared. They started to target her. They started to target her family. It just got too much for her.”
The sitcom writer also recalled his decision to start tweet his views on transgender issues.
He revealed he had undergone successful surgery for testicular cancer as he explained: “I think I was actually a bit high from morphine after the operation and I thought, ‘Why am I so nervous about getting involved in this?’
“And it was almost instantaneous. The first response I got was from someone saying — and bear in mind I’d just had the operation — ‘I wish the cancer had won’.”
Linehan then “jumped in with both feet” and began sharing controversial tweets about transgender rights on the platform and appeared on Newsnight for a debate about the Tavistock gender identity clinic for children.
The writer has also claimed his work has dried up, too. He said he was offered to direct Disney+ series Only Murders in the Building, before it was immediately withdrawn – and he has assumed the offer was taken off the table after “some kooky intern who wears a lot of liner, said, ‘Oh, he’s a bigot’.”
Linehan now relies on income from Netflix for The IT Crowd and subscribers to his blog.
Speaking of the fallout, he added he thought people would “step in” but he has been “ghosted” by his old friends in the media.
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