Ray Donovan boss: "We're still scratching our heads" over sudden cancelation

Vulture

"We had no indicator that the show was ending," showrunner David Hollander tells Vulture, reacting to Tuesday's news that the recently completed Season 7 will be the last for the Showtime fixer drama. He says his staff has responded with a range of emotions, from being grateful to sadness to anger to confusion. Hollander says his writers had already planned out Season 8 with expectations that next season would be the actual final season. "We were behaving creatively as though we were in mid-sentence," he says. "And so, there was no sense that this was going to be a completion. This was in no way a series finale." Hollander says he suspects the merger between CBS and Viacom might've played a role in the abrupt cancelation. "Whatever new environment grew from the merger clearly had some impact on their choice," he says. Asked if Ray Donovan had ever been on the bubble before, Hollander responds: "Not even remotely. Every other year, it was them dragging us out kicking and screaming. We were so used to it being the other way, where we were burned out by a show that was very hard to make and the network would pull us and cajole us and push us. We were used to being a show that was not canceled. We never thought we would be canceled."