Disney To Drop Simpsons Episode Featuring Neil Gaiman? Fans Wonder

After New York Magazine's article on sexual misconduct allegations against author Neil Gaiman surfaces, fans wonder if Disney will drop his Simpsons episode.

Published On Jan 16, 2025 | Updated On Jan 16, 2025

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This week, the very celebrated author Neil Gaiman found himself in quite a soup. While they were first informally discussed on a podcast almost a year ago, sexual assault allegations against the English writer have now made it to a New York Magazine article titled ‘There Is No Safe Word’. While last year, there were hush-hush discussions after Scarlett Pavlovich, a former nanny for Gaiman and his second wife, Amanda Palmer, came forward with her set of allegations, the article features 8 women who seem to have experienced sexual misconduct at Gaiman’s hands.

The article was published on Monday, to which author Neil Gaiman responded on Tuesday via a blog post. He wrote, “I’ve stayed quiet until now, both out of respect for the people who were sharing their stories and out of a desire not to draw even more attention to a lot of misinformation."

“I’ve always tried to be a private person, and felt increasingly that social media was the wrong place to talk about important personal matters. I’ve now reached the point where I feel that I should say something. As I read through this latest collection of accounts, there are moments I half-recognise and moments I don’t, descriptions of things that happened sitting beside things that emphatically did not happen. I’m far from a perfect person, but I have never engaged in non-consensual sexual activity with anyone. Ever."

While they are yet to be established, the allegations did lead to disappointment online. Thanks to his stellar young adult fiction books, writer Neil Gaiman enjoys a wide fan base, many of which took to the internet to express their disappointment and disdain for the details that have emerged from the article. This also included many users wondering if Disney will be pulling the Simpsons episode featuring Gaiman from its streaming services.

The Simpsons episode titled ‘The Book Job’ features author Neil Gaiman in a cameo, and aired during season 23 of the iconic series. Wondering what about the Simpsons plot involved Neil Gaiman’s cameo? In the episode ‘The Book Job’, Lisa is shocked to discover that all popular young-adult novels are not always written by a single author with some inspiration, but are often conceived by book publishing executives using market research and ghostwriters to make money.

When Simpsons’ Homer hears this, he decides to get rich by writing a fantasy novel about trolls, getting together with Bart, Principal Skinner, Patty, Moe, Professor Frink, and author Neil Gaiman. He manages to sell this novel to a book publishing executive, only to later discover that the executive has replaced the trolls with vampires because vampires are more popular. In an attempt to replace this new version with the old before the novel goes into print, the group breaks into the book publishing company's headquarters. The episode ‘The Book Job’ was written by Dan Webber.

Among many users who took to social media to talk about it, a user on X wrote, ‘How long until that Neil Gaiman episode of The Simpsons gets pulled from streaming and the only way to ever see it is if you own the dvd?

While there are always chances that can happen, it’ll be interesting to watch how this unfolds, given that after the podcast claims, a police report accusing Gaiman of sexual assault was made in January 2023, but the investigation was eventually dropped. Now that the New York Magazine article has brought up the details, and there are more people involved, we wonder what course of action will the entire story take.

For the uninitiated, Neil Gaiman enjoys almost a cult status amongst the fantasy book readers. He has penned major hit publications like the comic book series, The Sandman and the novels Good Omens, Stardust, Anansi Boys, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book. Apart from this, author Neil Gaiman has also won numerous awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker awards, as well as the Newbery and Carnegie medals. 


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