I knew I would have to get into the meat of this before beginning to explain why what the media have done is wrong: yes, I know the stories about Michael being hard to work with and being a bit of a dick. I haven’t worked with him, but I’ve come across plenty who have – none of them had a bad word to say about him. Take that for what it is worth, but I am aware I have a bias. However, I will note that plenty of them said this in the captions of their Instagram posts, not as some huge declaration to defend someone. They were simply discussing how much they enjoyed their work.

Of course, the people who have relished trashing and essentially trying to destroy his career (you may think I am exaggerating, but I really do think that’s the aim of at least one of them) have a bias too. A poisonous, spewing one.

One person who is particularly delighted in trashing Michael is Elaine Liu of LaineyGossip. Lainey takes great pride in her profession of spraying hate everywhere, and with Michael, she did it whenever he showed up for a professional assignment or at any awards ceremony. He didn’t have to do anything but breathe for her to dedicate paragraphs on how he was “extra pouty” and gross.

To be honest, this wouldn’t have bothered me so much except for one thing: Lainey has a “rule” (I use that term very loosely) that she has happily broken when it comes to those she hates (Heath Ledger was another victim. God knows what he did to make her hate him so much, but then the same applies with Michael). The rule is she won’t post “sad smut.” This includes mental breakdowns and addiction issues.

Yet she happily broke it to write a blind item about Michael and another actor (for the sake of privacy, I am not linking this. Google will guide you if you absolutely must know) in which Michael had a breakdown and was suicidal. It was awful for Michael to have such a private and horrible time of his life exposed, apparently, for mockery, given that the other actor was spoken of as an angel.

In terms of co-stars, there’s John Cameron Mitchell, who has become bafflingly angry at Michael after many years of seemingly being his friend. Michael even kissed him at an industry event in front of his amused partner Jamie. I honestly find Mitchell a disgusting phoney. I hope this answers the question one of his buttlickers asked when I made an angry comment at Mitchell online; this here, asshole, is my entire fucking problem.


Which leads us to the one who, despite being anonymous, is frightening and has caused the most damage: French Girl.

For years, whenever Michael was mentioned anywhere, she would show up to share her completely bullshit story: that Michael had stalked his friend and co-star in the Dreamers, Eva Green. At first I found her mildly irritating and occasionally funny (she would suggest him for blind items that clearly weren’t him).

Except others did believe it. They passed it on. When Michael had to believe hospitalised last year, filmed strapped down like an animal, while most people were sympathetic, others brought up French Girls’s fairy tale as a reason to hope he never came out and he was just a sucky, white actor anyway who got lucky (I guess those great reviews for his work wrote themselves). “I hope he stays there forever,” “Good,” came the hateful diarrhoea. It was sickening to me as a fan and someone with her own mental health and addiction issues. But most of all, because anyone could find out it wasn’t true by just reading the captions on the evagreenweb instagram. Although run by a relative, the captions are written by Eva, and she’s spoken with nothing but kindness and love about him. She does so in interviews, too.

How are people so deliberately THICK!?

As awful as what the others have done, what French Girl has done is libellous and damaging. She deserves to be sued for it. But Michael doesn’t seem the type to bother with Internet rubbish. French Girl is not alone in say libellous things about him – Uproxx apparently considered him the Biggest Douche In Hollywood – this was before Weinstein was outed, btw. But even so, the article accompanying this hilarious claim essentially amounted to a guy being mad Michael wouldn’t play with him. It was immensely childish, but Uproxx saw it as proof that everything bad that had been said about Michael was true.

I should add, at this point, another writer for the site prior to this wrote about how nice Michael was on the set of Boardwalk Empire, how he knew the crews name’s and greeted them every morning.

You can probably guess which article got the most attention.

At the height of his antics, Robert Downey Jr had many sympathetic articles written about him. They argued that he was troubled, he deserved sympathy and not hate. Which was true. Maybe because it was a different time, people seemed more willing to be, well, nice.

However, no one, it seems, cares to do so for Michael. When the disgusting assholes at TMZ released the video of Michael being wheeled into an ambulance, all articles simply gave an overview of his career and his apparent difficult behaviour that cost him the role of Jimmy Darmody on Boardwalk Empire.

Apparently, only some deserve sympathy and understanding.

So, since the media won’t do it. I will.

Michael Carmen Pitt, you deserve all the love and understanding of your issues. I’m sorry you haven’t received from the industry nor the media. I hope you know this small group of fans have your back.

Always.