Over the weekend, Afton Williamson publicized that she’d leave her role on The Rookie citing of racism and sexual harassment on set. On Monday night, she exposed in an Instagram post the names of the people she said were liable.
Williamson said the show runners unnoticed her protests of “racial discrimination/racially charged unsuitable comments” from the head of the show’s hair department, Sally Nicole Ciganovich, and sexual harassment from a recurring guest star, now recognized as Demetrius Grosse. It appears that Williamson has also revised Sunday’s Instagram post, in which she said she’d be leaving the series, to include their names.
After thanking her fans, Williamson wrote Monday that,
“The rippling effect it has had in just a few hours shows how much this world is aching with victims of racism, discrimination, sexual harassment, sexual assault, sexual abuse all of it. I am no stranger to all of the above even before this experience. But it is through this experience and my platform that God pushed me to use the power within me.”
On Monday morning during the network’s Television Critics Association summer press tour, ABC president Karey Burke said that she is “waiting for the results of that investigation” to take action.
Burke said, “At that time, those answers and those conclusions will help guide us about how to handle those situations in the future, if in fact there has been some sort of communication breakdown. I don’t have any more answers than that right now”.