Craig Mazin Quits Race For WGA West Vice President Citing Family Medical Issue
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UPDATED with statement from Phyllis Nagy and Nick Jones Jr.: Craig Mazin, the Emmy-nominated writer-creator of HBO’s Chernobyl, has dropped out of the race for vice president of the WGA West.
“I am regrettably withdrawing from the race,” he said in a statement, “due to a medical issue with an immediate family member that will require more of my attention and care in the next year than I had expected. I would have loved to serve, but I will not be able to. As the election season continues, I hope we can all keep these beautiful, final words from the late screenwriter Don Rhymer in mind: ‘Focus on the good.’”
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The guild issued the statement on his behalf, saying that he “will not be commenting beyond this statement.”
Mazin had been opposition leader Phyllis Nagy’s running mate. The two other vice presidential candidates in the race are Carl Gottlieb and incumbent Marjorie David, both of whom were selected to run by the guild’s nominating committee. David is a member of the guild’s agency negotiating committee, and Gottlieb is a former three-term vp and two-term secretary-treasurer.
Nagy and Nick Jones, Jr., her secretary-treasurer running mate, offered their support to Mazin and his family Wednesday.
“We extend our enormous sympathy and support to Craig Mazin and his family during a difficult time,” they said in a statement. “We hope you will all join us in respecting their privacy now, and in understanding that family always comes first. We will continue to stand and push forward, along with all candidates for the Board who believe that we must formulate a dynamic, new strategy in attacking the issues facing us.”
Mazin has said that new leadership at the guild will be required if the standoff with Hollywood’s talent agencies will ever be resolved. In a Scriptnotes podcast that aired on Tuesday, he said: “I wish I weren’t running for vice president, but I am. So I guess the big deal is that I actually agree with everything the union is doing in terms of its fight with the agencies. I support that fight. I just don’t love the way they’re going about prosecuting the fight, and I want more of a voice to see if we can get it resolved quicker. That’s basically what I’m going after. But there’s less daylight between me and those folks than people might think.”
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