Timothy Busfield is set to be edited out of an upcoming romantic comedy after he was arrested and charged with child sexual abuse.
The West Wing actor, 68, surrendered to Albuquerque police on January 13, four days after an arrest warrant charged him with two counts of criminal sexual contact and child abuse in connection with alleged incidents that occurred while working on the set of Fox series The Cleaning Lady.
Deadline reports that Busfield will now be cut out of You Deserve Each Other, a rom-com starring Penn Badgley and Meghann Fahy.
The film, based on Sarah Hogle’s bestselling 2020 novel, follows an unhappy couple whose attempts to sabotage their own wedding end up bringing them closer.
Busfield had reportedly already filmed his scenes as Bernie, the father of Fahy’s character Naomi, but they will now be discarded. No release date for the movie has yet been announced.
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Last week, NBC pulled an episode ofLaw & Order: SVU that was set to guest-star Busfield as a judge.
At the time Busfield turned himself in to police, his lawyer Larry Stein said in a statement to The Independent: “Tim Busfield denies the allegations in the criminal complaint and maintains they are completely false. As a voluntary step, he submitted to an independent polygraph examination regarding those allegations and passed.”
After Busfield’s arrest, Bernalillo County District Attorney Sam Bergman and Deputy DA Savannah Brandenburg-Koch filed paperwork to keep Busfield behind bars while he awaits trial, citing new allegations that the actor groped a 16-year-old girl.
According to the court filing, obtained by Deadline, the father of the newest alleged victim came forward on January 13 and told police that several years ago, his teen daughter alleged that Busfield “kissed her and put his hands down her pants and touched her privates” while she auditioned at the Sacramento theatre he founded, B Street Theatre.
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Following those allegations and the actor’s first court appearance on January 14, where he did not enter a plea, Busfield’s team submitted documents on January 16 opposing the motion to keep him locked up before trial.
“The State’s attempt to transform responsible self-surrender into aggravating conduct only underscores the absence of genuine evidence of dangerousness,” the documents read, per Deadline.
Known for his roles in The West Wing and Field of Dreams, Busfield was working on season two of The Cleaning Lady as a director and executive producer when he met the two young boys who have accused him of inappropriately touching them. One of the boys alleged that the incidents started when he was seven years old, according to the arrest warrant. The Fox show was cancelled last year.
Stein said in a statement that the allegations against him are an attempt by the boys’ mother to get revenge after the actors were not cast in the final season of the show.
Busfield has maintained his innocence, denying all allegations against him. If convicted, he faces years in prison.