Phillip Schofield has given a new explanation for his departure from This Morning.
The presenter discussed his exit from ITV during the third and final episode of his Channel 5 series Cast Away on Wednesday (October 2).
The reality format saw Schofield filming himself as he spent 10 days in solitude on an uninhabited island off the coast of Madagascar.
Cast Away‘s third and final episode saw Schofield addressing his departure from the ITV1 morning show last year.
In May 2023, Schofield released a public statement saying he’d “agreed to step down from This Morning with immediate effect”. ITV’s manager director Kevin Lygo subsequently praised the presenter for “his two decades worth of absolutely terrific television on the This Morning sofa”.
Schofield later acknowledged he’d had a “consensual” affair with a “younger male colleague” while working on This Morning but maintained the relationship was “unwise, but not illegal”.
Reflecting on that period in the third Cast Away episode, Schofield implied his exit from This Morning was related to his brother Timothy Schofield’s April 2023 criminal conviction of 11 sexual offences involving a child between 2016 and 2019, a case which was reported via outlets including BBC News at the time.
At the time of his sibling’s conviction, Schofield said in a statement: “As far as I am concerned, I no longer have a brother.”
Schofield did not directly address his brother’s case in Cast Away, but alleged he’d been punished because of “a member of my family who I refuse to name and refuse to acknowledge who committed a heinous crime”.
“We were praised by the police [for assistance in the case], and we got justice done, but still, even though they knew the facts, the papers painted me out to be some sort of complicit agent,” he said. “That’s when my world started to collapse.”
Schofield reflected on the pain of having to tell his mother about Timothy’s arrest, before later receiving a call from his agent to confirm ITV was letting him go.
He says he was told: “That’s it, it’s done, you’re not going back to [This Morning] on Monday.”
“[It was] nothing to do with me. I’ve just been fired because of him,” he alleged. “I was becoming more of a story than the programme.”
Schofield said that he’d “agreed to say that [he] resigned” because he felt “it would be neater for everybody”.
“I was always open and honest with everyone at work about what was happening with my brother. I was fired for the bad publicity. For someone else’s crime,” he alleged.
The former Dancing on Ice host also acknowledged: “A week later, I blew my own wheels off with everything else. I thought the only way to put this right was to commit a mea culpa. I came clean about my affair.”
Digital Spy has contacted ITV regarding Schofield’s latest comments on Cast Away.
Shortly after he left ITV, the presenter apologised for lying “to [his] employers at ITV, to [his] colleagues and friends, to [his] agents, to the media and therefore the public and, most importantly of all, to [his] family” about the affair with an ITV colleague.
ITV disclosed that it had previously investigated claims of an affair involving Schofield, but found no evidence at the time to escalate the matter further.
Jane Mulcahy KC subsequently led an inquiry into the behind-the-scenes culture at This Morning, which ended in December 2023 with “no finding of a ‘toxic’ culture” on set.
Schofield chose not to take part in this investigation citing “the risk to his health”, according to the published report.
ITV plc’s chairman Andy Cosslett said of the Mulcahy Inquiry findings: “The KC makes it clear that the senior management of ITV and the senior team of This Morning were unaware of the nature of the relationship until Philip Schofield’s statement in May 2023.
“We also asked the KC to review how we acted towards Person X, and the KC has found that the company provided significant support to him.
“I hope that the completion of this review allows the team at This Morning to get back to what they do so well – making a brilliant show that entertains and informs millions of viewers every week.”
The final episode of Cast Away also featured a scene where Schofield said he’d compiled a list of names of “people who were toxic in [his] life” during his 10 days on the island.
After he was shown throwing the list into his campfire, he remarked: “Now, the toxic bank is empty, and the goodness bank is full.”
In an earlier Cast Away episode, Schofield cast doubt on making a full-scale TV comeback, as he took time to “revisit the past and come to some big decisions”.
“I don’t think I want to do it anymore,” he said. “Look, I love telly. I’ve got telly in my bones. But I won’t sit on a sofa again, I’m not going to do that again.
“And there are some people I won’t work for again, some people I won’t work with again. I’ve been hurt so badly by that sort of telly, and by some of the people in that sort of telly, that you get to the point where you think, ‘I don’t wanna do it any more’.”
This Morning airs Mondays through Fridays on ITV. Cast Away aired on Channel 5.
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