‘Newsroom’ Creator Aaron Sorkin Talks Rape Episode Controversy After Rogue Writer Tweet and Rolling Stone Controversy

Last week’s penultimate episode of HBO’s Newsroom garnered a lot of controversy for its campus rape story-line. In the episode, Don (Thomas Sadoski) tried to talk a young rape victim out of sharing her story in a sensationalized format. Following the recent Rolling Stone campus rape controversy, its is no wonder this story went viral. One objector to the episode was a writer on the show, who went rogue and tweeted that, the show’s creator, Aaron Sorkin kicked her out of the writer's room. Now Sorkin is telling his side of the story.

During last week’s episode of The Newsroom, writer Alena Smith Tweeted her disaproval of the subject matter, writing:

"When I tried to argue, in the writers' room, that we maybe skip the story line where a rape victim gets interrogated by a random man, I ended up getting kicked out of the room and screamed at just like Hallie [Grace Gummer] would have for a 'bad tweet, I found the experience quite boring. I wanted to fight with Aaron about the NSA, not gender. I didn't like getting cast in his outdated role."

However, Aaron Sorkin has now opened up about the other side of the story, releasing a statement to Mediaite that details what lead up to Smith being kicked out of the room:

“I heard Alena’s objections and there was some healthy back and forth. After a while I needed to move on (there’s a clock ticking) but Alena wasn’t ready to do that yet. I gave her more time but then I really needed to move on. Alena still wouldn’t let me do that so I excused her from the room.”

Sorkin went on to add, that Smith ultimately approved of the final scene:

“The next day I wrote a new draft of the Princeton scenes--the draft you saw performed last night. Alena gave the new pages her enthusiastic support. So I was surprised to be told this morning that Alena had tweeted out her unhappiness with the story. But I was even more surprised that she had so casually violated the most important rule of working in a writers room which is confidentiality.”

What did you think about the episode? Do you the episode went too far? Let us know your thoughts on the subject in the comments section at the bottom of the page.