Jason Mitchell Breaks Silence About Being Fired From ‘The Chi’

For the first time since he was fired from The Chi amid misconduct allegations earlier this year, Jason Mitchell is offering his version of what happened.

The actor sat down for an interview Monday morning on The Breakfast Club, and discussed his exit from the Showtime series, as well as being dropped from the Netflix film Desperados this past spring.

“To be honest I’m not 100 percent sure what the allegations themselves were, but I can tell you what happened,” Mitchell said about being dropped from Desperados, which was shooting in Mexico.

“With Desperados, we were in pre-production and I went out with a co-worker of mine and she got drunk. Being the person that I am, I felt responsible to make sure she got home,” he said. “We’re in Mexico City and we’re in a foreign land and we should stick together. So it was like, this isn’t where I leave her. I made sure she got home.”

“The next day, it kind of all slapped me in the face because I’m not sure if her and her significant other had a situation, because I did FaceTime her boyfriend to figure out how to get there and how to go about getting her home,” he added.

Mitchell said the day after he went out with his co-worker, rehearsals for the film were canceled and producers asked him what happened.

“They came to me and they were like, ‘Jason, we need to talk to you about this activity that went on,'” he recalled. “They weren’t exactly specific with me about anything, you know? And I was a little baffled about that. But they did pay me in full, you know, before I left.”

Mitchell then offered an apology. “If I did do anything, say anything, to make anybody feel any kind of way, you have my deepest apologies,” he said.

Host Charlamagne Tha God asked him about The Chi and the situation with actress Tiffany Boone, who played his on-screen girlfriend.

As previously reported in May, Boone was one of “several actresses” on the series who allegedly had problems with Mitchell.

Former showrunner Ayanna Floyd Davis went public days after the story broke and said she was a target of Mitchell’s “rage” when she tried to stop his alleged inappropriate behavior on the job. Davis also alleged that series’ executive producer and creator, Lena Waithe, was informed of Mitchell’s conduct during season one, but the actor was still allowed to return for the second season.

Mitchell suggested Davis was behind his termination, but insisted he has a good relationship with Waithe.

“Lena has done nothing but create opportunities for us all,” he said. “It was just painful to watch to see Lena have to save her brand from something that went on with me. Shout out to Lena Waithe, she’s still always going to be a good friend of mine.”

Charlamagne Tha God and co-host DJ Envy then asked him if there were complaints about his behavior at The Chi.

“To be honest, I really hate to say this. I’m all for the #MeToo movement,” he said. “But I think, in this situation, Ayanna tried to use it as a really ugly weapon.”

Mitchell also insisted that Boone left the show for another opportunity.

“Tiffany Boone left the show because she got a better job. She put in two seasons with us and she went on to get a better job. Anybody who knows Tiffany Boone knows that she is the epitome of a Black woman,” he said. “If you try her, she will get you together, right then and there. I encourage people to be more like that. Had me and Tiffany ever had a situation in which she felt sexually harassed, she would have told me about myself in that moment.”