Doug Ellin, the creator of HBO drama Entourage, says the network have “ignored” his series in the last decade due to the “wave of righteous PC culture.”
In its time on air, the show was criticised for its perceived misogynistic depiction of women and glorifying toxic relationships in Hollywood.
In a new interview with Yahoo Entertainment, Ellin said he is unhappy with the network distancing itself from the show since it went off air in 2011, and blames it on wider culture in the entertainment industry.
“I resent it tremendously,” he said, adding that he believes the reason for the distance between HBO and the show’s creators was down to a “wave of righteous PC culture,” the same attitudes that led the show to be criticised in the first place.
“I don’t think Entourage was this vulgar boy-fest that people like to paint it as now,” Ellin added. “When we came out, the New York Times said we were the smartest show on television! If we did reboot the show, it’s not that I would make it any more PC, but I would write it to the best of my abilities to reflect the reality of the world right now.”
“At the time, it was an extremely realistic depiction of this town, but what the show was about was friendship and loyalty and family,” he added. “Those are the things that I hope people will take away from it long after the rest quiets down. I think there’s an overcorrection that happened, and hopefully we’ll get to a place where there’s equality for everybody, but there’s also room for people to create their art and not be judged so harshly.”
The creator went on to say that the backlash against the show cost him the chance to create another series at HBO, which he’d developed a pilot for. He explained: “I did a pilot with Michael Imperioli, Michael Rappaport and Ed Burns that [HBO] passed on, which I’ll never forgive them for. Whether they thought it was good or not, I earned my chance to have a second shot, and they put some other pretty crappy shows on [instead].”
Ellin concluded: “Nobody says that about The Sopranos, where they murder people, that maybe we should readdress whether murdering people on TV is OK. I don’t want to sound obnoxious or that I’m looking at Entourage as high art, but it was a pretty accurate portrayal of how people [acted] at that time in Hollywood.”
Entourage concluded in September 2011. Two years later, it was reported that Warner Bros had green-lit a movie version of the show.
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