I know that we kind of stepped away from the scandal surrounding Michael Muhney’s firing from The Young and the Restless, partly because we really weren’t aiming to keep repeating vicious rumors, but there is some serious stuff that seems to have been swept under the carpet in all of the chaos. First of all, when Muhney announced that he would be leaving the show he was set to film his final scenes just a few days later. There wasn’t much of an advance warning for the actor but then we later learned from a former Y&R producer that Hunter King had accused Muhney of groping her breasts on two occasions , quite awhile before he was fired.
Let that fact sink in. CBS, executive producer Jill Farren Phelps and whomever else was aware of the accusations chose not to take action immediately. Instead the figured out how to ruin Muhney’s character until they hoped that fans wouldn’t mind his dismissal so much. If they actually believed King shouldn’t they have taken action immediately to protect her rather than force her to continue working with the actor that she spoke up about?
Also, this has repeatedly been referred to as sexual harassment by the network, Muhney’s costars, etc but if we are to believe that he actually put a hand on this young girl then it actually no longer is just harassment, but it turns into sexual assault. No one is actually calling it that though in spite of the allegations. I really have to wonder if the network fully believed King because if so they took no steps to protect her!
It looks more like they weren’t totally buying it so Muhney stayed on with the show for months after the vicious allegations were made. When his contract was winding down CBS opted not to renew because it was risky and in firing him they could blame it on the accusations made by a coworker.
I’m not going to even pretend to know what has happened but from the facts that we have been handed this whole situation has been completely mishandled from the jump and absolutely no one involved is emerging from it completely unscathed. It could have been very different, don’t you think? Did CBS believe that Muhney was guilty or were they just handed a strong enough excuse to usher him out the door? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below!
If you love soaps as much as we do, head over to Facebook and join the conversation – dishing daily all the soap opera news.
