Editor’s Note: Deadline reveals here for the first time that Clean Slate has been canceled by Prime Video. The last completed project involving Norman Lear, the comedy featured Laverne Cox and George Wallace as an estranged daughter and father from Mobile, Alabama trying to reconnect after decades apart amid tensions over trans rights and a changing America. In a guest column, Cox, Wallace and co-creator Dan Ewen reveal the cancellation news, the show’s origins and the flag of dignity they believe it flew.

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Clean Slate premiered on Prime Video on February 6th.

By the end of March, our eight-episode series, our labor of love, was canceled.

A seven-year effort was gone in a puff of server exhaust. The following piece from we, the creators of Clean Slate, soon materialized. Please forgive the word count. This shit was cheaper than therapy. 

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The room was dead quiet for a moment. Norman Lear sat alongside his Sony penthouse window, cane in hand. “Look at this regal wockaflocka,” George thought. Wallace has tried to maintain a reputation as a clean comedian and had borrowed a rapper’s name as a PG-friendly word substitute. It would become the cast and crew’s favorite word, alongside his trademarked “whatnot.” 

Norman shook his head in amazement. He looked at us, collecting his thoughts before asking, “I’m almost a hundred years old. How have I just learned so much about something so important?” 

There, aside from us and the Yoda of Hollywood? Lear’s amazing and relentless right hand at Act III Productions, Brent Miller, and Laverne’s instinctive manager-producer, Paul Hilepo. 

Laverne, one of precious few Alabamans to appear on both the cover of Time magazine and British Vogue, had spent the prior 90 minutes entertaining dozens of questions about transness from the ever-curious Norman. It was a fantastic conversation, and we would wager it was Norman’s first meeting where he would find himself addressed as “guuuurl” 17 times. 

Some of Lear’s questions were too personal, some overly medical. Laverne’s retort, “That information is between me and my doctor and my boyfriend,” would end up in the pilot script. But Norman’s questions were evidence of a mind that had remained open, decades after most people’s have welded shut and whatnot. 

George and his frequent collaborator/fellow Georgian/white boy/former nanny Dan Ewen had sauntered into Act III’s offices a few weeks earlier. For years, George and Dan had been living inside a real-life Hacks, just with way more jokes about Piggly Wiggly. 

They pitched the Clean Slate premise as Sanford and Daughter. George’s first paid job in Los Angeles was as a joke writer for Redd Foxx, and he had worked with Norman on a pair of doomed projects many moons before, 704 Hauser Street and Tall Hopes. George lent Terrence Howard $500 during production of the latter, and still anxiously awaits recoupment. But we digress and whatnot. 

George, a self-admitted “old-ass wockaflocka,” had been in front of microphones since Star Wars was in theaters. Yes, the original one, with the Jawas riding around in that big SUV, having impromptu droid sales and whatnot. He had watched just about every person he did comedy with get 12 sitcoms and 3,129 movie deals. Hell, his best friend, Jerry, did more than alright, and now receives a Porsche by mail every 36 hours. 

Wallace enjoyed a storied Vegas residency at the Flamingo. Laverne had brought her mother to his show, blissfully unaware that she and Wallace would someday be arguing in a Plymouth Barracuda on a set in Georgia. George had thrived in Sin City and had become dear friends with Donnie and Marie. But across the Mojave, those Hollywood wockaflockas hadn’t figured out how to truly showcase him. 

Back to Act III’s office, where George and Dan waited for a response after blabbing semi-coherently for 10 minutes. Lear explained that Sanford and Son wouldn’t be revisited. However, he felt their take stood on its own merits, which in Norman-speak came out as, “That’s a great fucking idea.” He and Miller asked for a beat to consider whether to engage, or to cut their losses at the two Fiji waters George and Dan had eagerly consumed. 

During that window, Dan wrote Paul Hilepo about the project, via electronic mail. Paul, moved by Dan’s astonishing words, and also by the fact that ACT III was interested, set a one-hour coffee for Dan and Laverne at the not-at-all-clichéd Soho House. The huddle proceeded to run four hours, much to the chagrin of three handbag influencers waiting for a table. 

The conversation was full of laughter, tears and story ideas, many autobiographical, from Cox’s childhood in Mobile, Alabama. By the time the smoke cleared Dan had inhaled his weight in couscous, and a third creator had seamlessly entered the fray. Dan left that meeting feeling he had a sense of Laverne’s voice, which he describes as “a complex stew of insight, grace, and fuck around and find out.” He closed himself in a now-defunct designer latte “shoppe” and penned the spec pilot. 

Ewen surprised George, Laverne, Hilepo, Miller and Lear with the draft. The project suddenly had legs, leading to the storied meeting in Lear’s penthouse office. Lear and Miller were over seven Fiji waters in. There was no turning back. Act III and their partners at Sony Pictures Television came aboard. We were off and power-walking. 

The process of finding a home for the show was full of stops, starts and a few horrifying, non-validated parking scenarios. The good folks at Peacock planted a flag in the series initially, before trimming it from their slate in favor of projects developed closer to scenic Lankershim Boulevard. That became, more or less, a one-year pass and whatnot. Sony kept scouring, along with Act III. Clean Slate would be nabbed by Freevee, a plucky Amazon imprint with a demonstrated appetite for making interesting half-hour comedies. 

Dan called Simran Baidwan, wordsmith/PTA stalwart/bad mammajamma, about coming on board. The usually meaningless words “we should work together someday” had passed between Dan and Simran at numerous parties over the years. Nothing glamorous. They were usually surrounded by toddlers, soiling their pull-ups while smeared with frosting. The toddlers, not Dan and Simran. Suddenly, there was an opening to actually make good on those empty threats of collaboration. Everyone immediately loved Simran, who currently faces eight years of Emmy-showers for The Pitt. 

The historically authentic Clean Slate writing staff was assembled at Sony, and requisite selfies were soon taken in front of the Ghostbusters station wagon. Let it be known that Norman Lear’s final comedy room was an intersectional, authentic thing of beauty, and the stuff of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s nightmares. An equally diverse director slate was put together next, as pre-production neared in Savannah, the clearly haunted, tax-friendly, moss-peppered “stunt double” for Mobile. 

Any worries that George was more of a standup than an actor subsided, as he and the seasoned, decorated, and yes, willing-to-do-a-pratfall-in-a-broken-recliner Laverne hit the Georgia stages with chemistry, timing and heart. A sense of joyful purpose pervaded the shoot, along with several million bugs of every size and demeanor and whatnot. The project hopscotched through the trickiness of the strike, wrapping in May of 2023. The first ever trans-starring sitcom was in the can. 

At the conclusion of the strike, tattered Hokas were donated to Goodwill and editing would commence. Norman loved seeing what he had blessed, and what the team had conjured. However, the most storied producer in comedy history, this beam of light in a careening golf cart, would not see the final product. He passed away that December, simultaneously ruining Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. You know a wockaflocka has crushed it when they die at 101 and all you can think is, “Gone too soon.” 

The next month, GLAAD would receive the Governor’s Award at the Emmys, for their important work and general badassery. They would plead for more trans storytelling, pointing out that more people believe they’ve seen a ghost than have ever met a trans person. We were thrilled to be answering that call. Three months later Clean Slate was ready to be on y’all’s televisions and devices and whatnot. 

The launch would take a minute. A bunch of minutes. How many minutes are in that Rent song again? Prime Video was set to inherit Freevee’s slate, and all kind of stuff above our pay grade was being ironed out and discussed and bandied about and whatnot. What the hell is “bandying” anyway? At any rate, it led to a tough wait. We all started knitting. Covid Era bread kits were dusted off. 42 scarves and 18 baguettes later, we had a premiere date. February 6th. 

What an emotional release it was to see this labor of love meet the world.

It was a fight, but our joyful, aspirational comedy about a trans Black woman returning to South Alabama as her true self had gone from just an inkling to a billboard in Midtown. This celebration of family, both chosen and not, had somehow endured. Our asses were jubilant at the Manhattan special screening. We were triumphant at the SCAD TV Fest in Atlanta. Hell, sometimes we had the nerve to be both jubilant and triumphant simultaneously. 

The series was met with much admiration. We went on the shows, bantering with Whoopi, Kelly, Seth and others. We presented at the Image Awards and were showered with love. We enjoyed promising domestic numbers, especially with the African American audience. Critics called it “A tall glass of sweet tea,” “Norman Lear’s parting gift,” and a “show we need now more than ever.” But by the time audiences saw Laverne’s epic trip down Jennifer Hudson’s dance line, Clean Slate was already toast. What? Guuuuuurl. 

We’re not gonna sit here and pretend we’re the first show to get canceled. Hell, four shows were zapped while you read this. We humbly thank those at Sony and Amazon who worked on and on the behalf of Clean Slate. It is a privilege and a joy to make a living in the creative sphere, let alone while telling a story of import. You helped make it all possible. 

Of course, we mourn our baby. We mourn for the jobs that disappear with this news. We mourn the continued demise of non-IP creations (for the record, we would’ve gladly thrown some dragons into Harry’s car wash, or made Desiree a secret agent). We mourn full seasons. We mourn Norman, and his bravery, and his not infrequent cursing. We mourn sister projects that face a similar fate. We mourn the characters being scrubbed from storytelling out of fear. 

Thank you to everyone who laughed and cried with us. Thank you to everyone who told us our show was exactly what you needed to see and feel during this dark time. We will be conducting a folksy awards campaign, so keep your eyes peeled for our bake sale. “For Yo’ Momma’s Consideration” ads are being prepared. Conversations will continue about where and how Desiree and Harry’s journey might continue. We would love to further the echo of Norman’s voice. We will push to keep the story alive, for the sake of the kind of people portrayed in it, the kind of people being legislated out of existence, or erased from history books. 

It feels like it’s time to fight like hell for nice things. And whatnot.