Fans were left shocked by the sudden cancellation of the Showtime series, Ray Donovan as it was announced that the series would not be getting a final eighth season to properly wrap up some of its storylines. If you thought fans were shocked, showrunner David Hollander was downright baffled by the swift cancellation and now he’s speaking out.
In an interview with “Vulture”, Hollander got very candid about the decision and it’s one that he definitely did not see coming:
“We’re still scratching our heads. We had no indicator that the show was ending. We were behaving creatively as though we were in mid-sentence. And so, there was no sense that this was going to be a completion. This was in no way a series finale.” (referring to the season 7 finale which is now its series finale).
Hollander goes on to speculate what might have led to the cancellation and it has to do with the recent CBS/Viacom merger:
“The corporate elements of show business are complicated and often mired in things that will never be spoken out loud. I think the easiest external impact was the merger. Whatever new environment grew from the merger clearly had some impact on their choice… We were so used to it being the other way, where we were burned out by a show that was very hard to make and the network would pull us and cajole us and push us. We were used to being a show that was not canceled. We never thought we would be canceled.”
The showrunner also goes on to reveal that season 8 was going to be the planned swan song for the show and he gives an indication of where that ending was likely headed:
“The pivot we had been making narratively was to move the backstory into the present and run it concurrently. So there were actually two stories to be told: What happened then, really, and how will that impact what happens now? The next step was what happened with Ray and Mickey [Jon Voight] in the ’90s, which would have been the creation of Ray Donovan as a character and as a fixer. That’s why we went into such detail to find the right cast.”
Hollander also admits that he has mixed feelings about the decision because while he’s upset the network decided to go this route, he’s also thankful that the network made Ray Donovan possible in the first place:
“It’s complicated. The people who made this decision are the same people who brought this to the air. They were unbelievably supportive creatively. They were always deeply in the artist’s corner, and deeply committed to our success. There was never a moment where I saw any of them negatively charged toward our show. They were always proud of it. They always accepted our indulgences. They put up with the fact that I was demanding a visual template as strong as anything out there. And that’s time and money. They were cool with that — until they weren’t.”
Fans have been VERY outspoken about another platform picking up the series for at least one more season, with many suggesting Netflix as an option. Hollander has heard those pleas and while he’s open to it, he knows it would be a difficult task:
“I would never say never. It is much easier to do it in the now. The sets are still standing. The people are still contracted. The mechanisms are in place. Once we tear down the sets and put the costumes away… it’s a lot of actors who are in demand.”
