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Typically when an actor leaves a beloved show in the middle of its run, coverage of that departure is filled with gushing interviews detailing about how great the experience was. T.J. Miller isn’t typical. Following his departure from Silicon Valley, Miller gave an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that could be graciously described as scattered. If you want to be less gracious, the interview was confusing and bizarrely vicious toward the series that made Miller a household name, its creators, and The Emoji Movie.
It was announced in late May that Miller would not be returning to the HBO comedy. In a sneaky move that deserves an editorial tip of the hat, The Hollywood Reporter published two interviews about Silicon Valley’s Season 4 finale at the same time on Sunday, both written by Bryn Elise Sandberg. The first, from series creator Mike Judge, reads like a typical end-of-season interview. Judge talked about how much he enjoyed giving Richard (Thomas Middleditch) and Pied Piper a happy ending for once and discussed his plan to end the series after Season 6. Judge also discussed Miller’s departure in the kind, vaguely regretful way you would expect from a creator talking about one of his biggest stars.
“It was kind of becoming clear that [Miller] didn’t want to do the show anymore, but we wanted to leave it so that there would be an opportunity to come back at some point,” Judge said to The Hollywood Reporter. To align with Miller’s interests, his character, Erlich Bachman, ended Season 4 passed out in a drug house in Tibet. “And then when the season was done, we talked to T.J. and said, ‘Do you want to come back for part of it?’ And he just wanted to move on. We wanted to give him an out if he wanted to go.”
Judge also said that if Miller ever wants to come back, there would be room for him to do so. However, he did not want to make Miller be anywhere he didn’t want to be. “I don’t take any pleasure in making people do something they don’t want to do. I think some bosses do, but I don’t. It also wouldn’t make for a very good work environment,” the Silicon Valley creator said.
Seems like a fairly typical case of creative differences and well wishes, right? Not so much. Let’s move on to Miller’s take on the situation.
In his interview with Sandberg, which reads as confrontational but with no clear target in sight, the comedian first explained his departure from Silicon Valley by mentioning his busy schedule. According to Miller, he was so busy, HBO had to move the show’s production schedule around to accommodate him. For Season 5, HBO initially offered Miller a three to five episode arc — a schedule that would give Erlich a new story but could better navigate around Miller’s many projects. Miller passed, deciding instead to leave the show altogether. However, Miller also argued that his character’s departure was actually a good thing for the show.
“I also think it’s interesting to leave a comedy at its height, one that is known for being cyclical. Everybody sort of criticizes [that part of the show],” Miller said. “The only thing that you can talk down about the show and about Alec Berg, the showrunner for the first couple years, is that it’s cyclical. If they fail, then they succeed, and then if they succeed, they fail. It’s over and over. That’s an old type of sitcom.”
“That’s Seinfeld, where Alec Berg used to work. It’s recycling, it’s network. This is HBO. And so I thought, what if suddenly the whole thing changed? Where’s the guy at the house? He’s gone. Richard doesn’t have a foil. Jian Yang [Jimmy O. Yang] comes to prominence. All these other characters will change and grow,” he said.
Miller also argued that nobody on the show liked Ehrlich and that there was no reason for his character to continue to exist in Pied Piper’s universe. The comedian also took a few more jabs at the show that turned him into a household name. “But I just thought that what the show has suffered from, what’s bad about it, is that Richard is the CEO and then he isn’t but then he finds his way back to be CEO, and then once he finds his way back to being the CEO he says he doesn’t want to be the CEO, and it’s just the same thing over and over. … So I thought it would be really interesting [to leave],” he said.
However, Miller’s weirdest comments relate to writer and producer Alec Blerg. Though Miller praised creators Mike Judge and writer Clay Tarver and heaped mounds of compliments on his co-stars (especially Jimmy O. Yang), he seems to really dislike Blerg:
“I don’t know how smart [Alec] is,” Miller said. “He went to Harvard, and we all know those kids are f—ing idiots. That Crimson trash. Those comedy writers in Hollywood are f—ing Harvard graduates and that’s why they’re smug as a bug.”
Miller also joked about the artistic merits of The Emoji Movie, said he was only really interested in things that make him laugh, and referred to 2017 as a “post-religious, post-meaning society.” It’s truly an odd interview that does so many mental backflips, it makes your head ache. You should absolutely read it now.
