John Krasinski defends selling YouTube lockdown series to CBS after fan backlash

Actor and director said keeping the show ‘wasn’t sustainable’

John Krasinski has defended his decision to sell his popular YouTube lockdown series to CBS, following a huge backlash from fans.

For the past two months, the actor and director has been hosting the webseries Some Good News, a show focusing on positive and uplifting stories from around the world during the coronavirus pandemic.

The show brought in tens of millions of viewers over its eight-week run, which featured a reunion of the cast of The Office and a Hamilton performance.

Krasinski announced last week that Some Good News had been sold to CBS, and to fans’ disappointment it was also revealed he would no longer be hosting the show.

“Wow,” wrote Krasinski to his Twitter followers. “Who can believe when we started this thing together we all just wanted good news to be more fully represented in our everyday lives. And now? You quite literally ARE the good news! Thanks to you, SGN lives on, joining the ranks of this historic news network! See you all soon!”

There was a swift backlash to the move, with some accusing Krasinski of being a “sell out” and arguing that trying to make large amounts of money from the series goes against everything it stands for.

“So he made eight YouTube videos comprised largely of unpaid contributions from fans, sold the brand to a major conglomerate, and isn’t even going to make it anymore?” wrote one user. “Just cashed out? Does this rub anyone else the wrong way, kinda?”

In a new interview with his former Office co-star, Rainn Wilson, Krasinski defended himself, saying: “I was only planning on doing eight of them during quarantine. I have these other things that I’m going to be having to do very soon, like Jack Ryan. More than that, writing, directing and producing — all those things — with a couple of my friends was so much…

“I knew that it wouldn’t be sustainable with my prior commitments. I would love to keep doing the show from my office forever, but it wasn’t sustainable.”

Krasinski added that while he won’t be the regular host, he hopes to serve as a guest presenter on Some Good News in the future.

“We have a lot of really fun stuff planned and I can’t wait to dig in,” he said. “I’m going to be a part of it whenever I can, and I’m going to host a couple episodes and bring on a different community of people. We’re really, really excited about it.”