‘General Hospital’ Producers Planned To Write Off Ingo Rademacher’s Character Before His Vaccine Objections Got Him Fired, ABC Reveals
Dec. 30 2022, Published 6:00 p.m. ET
General Hospital producers had planned to write off Ingo Rademacher’s character Jasper “Jax” Jacks months before his objections to vaccines got him fired from the show, the network claimed in court, RadarOnline.com has learned.
According to court documents obtained by RadarOnline.com, ABC has asked the court to dismiss the entire lawsuit brought by Rademacher over alleged discrimination.
In his lawsuit, Ingo said ABC fired him after 25 years due to his refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccination. He said he had requested a religious exemption but was terminated. His lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.
ABC denied all allegations of wrongdoing. The network said its decisions to fire Ingo were proper.
A lawyer for the network argued, “[ABC] had an honest, good-faith belief that all decisions with respect to [Ingo] were made by [ABC] solely for legitimate, business-related reasons.” He said if the network had made a special accommodation for Ingo it would have created or increased a health/safety risk for other employees.
In ABC’s latest motion, it lays out the case for the lawsuit being dismissed. As part of their argument, the network said that it had every right to write off Ingo’s character whenever it pleased — and pointed to several times in the past.
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“Like many long-running soap operas, it is common for characters to appear, disappear, and reappear based on storylines. Jax was no exception,” the motion read. The network said Ingo did not appear in any episodes from March 10, 2013 until June 26, 2016; October 20, 2016, until March 6, 2017; and March 22, 2017 until March 29, 2019.
Ingo’s most recent stint on General Hospital started in 2019. The network said it executed a three-year contract with the soap star, with each year broken down into two 26-week cycles.
“While the contract provided minimum compensation per cycle, the three-year term was not assured,” the filing said. “Rather, ABC could cancel the contract at the end of any cycle, provided it gave [Ingo] six weeks prior written notice. The contract also required [Ingo] to comply with all applicable ABC policies, of which the Vaccine Policy was one.”
The network said it picked up Ingo’s taping cycles in September 2019, March 2020, December 2020, and then again in June 2021. However, by July 2019, the co-head writer had decided that Jax was one of several characters who would be or might possibly be written off the show.
“At that time, Jax’s role in the ongoing storyline was negligible and [the writer] did not see a role for Jax going forward,” the motion read.
ABC said while they did not discriminate against Ingo and argued it had no plans to keep him around regardless.