In May, CNN published a report in which eight women accused actor Morgan Freeman of sexual harassment. The allegations caused National Geographic to put on pause their latest docuseries with him, The Story of God with Morgan Freeman, so they could perform an internal investigation. On Friday, the channel announced they had concluded their investigation and were moving forward with Freeman’s show.
“When we learned of recent allegations surrounding Mr. Freeman completely unrelated to our work with him, as a precaution we paused production on our new season in order to complete a thorough investigation led by our parent company Fox executed through an independent investigator,” National Geographic said in a statement reported by EW. “The results of this investigation revealed no incidents of concern during any of our work with Mr. Freeman.”
The CNN report laid out claims of a “toxic” work environment created by Freeman and production company co-founder Lori McCreary. After the report surfaced, the actor apologized for “misplaced compliments or humor,” but denied any sexual harassment. Clearly I was not always coming across the way I intended. And that is why I apologized Thursday and will continue to apologize to anyone I might have upset, however unintentionally,” he said at the time. “But I also want to be clear: I did not create unsafe work environments. I did not assault women.”
In the new statement, National Geographic said, “We have now made the decision to move forward with the production of season three of The Story of God. This series has expanded our understanding of religion and culture around the world and has touched many of our fans, and along with Morgan and the team at Revelations Entertainment, we look forward to resuming pre-production this September. As a company, we take all issues of harassment very seriously and we’re confidently assured by the results of the investigation.”
