Majumder shocked by ouster from show
Ex-22 Minutes comic says show wasn’t reaching full potential
VICTORIA AHEARN
TORONTO Shaun Majumder says he’s not angry or upset over his departure from the CBC-TV comedy series This Hour Has 22 Minutes — but he was shocked by it.
The actor-comedian born in Burlington, N.L., announced on social media Monday that after 15 years with the satirical news program, he won’t be returning to the new season this fall — a decision he says wasn’t his.
In a Facebook post, he said: “Unfortunately, due to creative differences between the Halifax producers and myself, the decision for my departure was not mine.”
In a subsequent interview with The Canadian Press, Majumder said it happened in June after he wrote a letter to Halifax-based DHX Media with suggestions for how the team could make the show better this coming season, which starts Sept. 18.
“It was a very positive letter, a very constructive letter and I think they felt like I was overstepping my boundaries a little bit and then they chose to let me go,” said Majumder, who was also a writer on the show. “So it was an odd thing, it kind of came out of nowhere. I was expecting a phone-call conversation about the letter that I wrote,” Majumder said.
“Then my conversation with the producer didn’t go the way I thought it was going to go. Basically instead of talking about the letter, they had offered up the idea that I wasn’t happy there — which, I was happy there, I just felt like we could make a better show.
“And they said, ‘No, I think it’s time you move on.’ ”
DHX Media has not commented publicly on the events.
Majumder joined 22 Minutes in 2003 and won a Gemini Award for his role on the show in 2006. His other credits include the film Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle and the U.S. series The Firm, 24 and Detroit 187.
Majumder owned a home in Los Angeles during his run on the show and spent years flying to and from the 22 Minutes studio in Halifax.
He heaps praise on the show, but he wants it to be “the absolute best it can be” and has been pushing for changes for a few years now, he said. “I feel like our show should be a show that is unapologetic — it always has been — and it should be a show that really pushes the boundaries as much as we can,” Majumder said.
He said he hasn’t spoken with the producers since that phone conversation.
“It was very much a shock to me; I was not expecting that conversation to go that way. But I feel really good about where I want to be and what I want to do.”