Greg Garcia and Jason Lee respond to Baldwin's 'Earl' remarks

By April MacIntyre Sep 12, 2008, 16:14 GMT

Alec Baldwin -Los Angeles Premiere - Arrivals - Samuel Goldwyn Theatre at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences - Los Angeles, CA, USA © Lee Roth / RothStock / PR Photos

There's a small feud simmering at NBC between a showrunner of the popular "My Name is Earl" and a star of the comedy, "30 Rock."

Earlier this week actor Alec Baldwin blamed the low ratings on his show, "30 Rock," due to NBC playing favorites with time slots for their shows.

Alec Baldwin talked about "30 Rock" and its relationship to NBC in the September 8th edition of The New Yorker:

Some actors might have taken NBC’s avidity as a compliment. “I said, ‘Go f*ck yourself,’ ” Baldwin remembered. “I saw it as network scumbags trying to f*ck you around. Zucker, I like”—Jeff Zucker, now the president and C.E.O. of NBC Universal, was then running NBC television—“but everybody who works for Zucker I have reservations about.”

Baldwin added, “If the show does succeed, it’ll be something of a f*cking miracle, because NBC hasn’t done a f*cking thing to help this show at all. This show is the red-headed stepchild in the lineup. They’ve gone out of their way to wring the last drops out of ‘My Name Is Earl’ and ‘Scrubs.’ Those shows are done! They’re cooked! Yet they do a one-hour episode of ‘Earl’! You’ve got to be f*cking kidding me!” (Jeff Zucker told me, “Alec brings to ‘30 Rock’ a level of comedic excellence that is unparalleled in network television.”)

Garcia called Baldwin and his comments “unlikeable” and “distasteful,” according to SFGate.com.

Garcia said, “[Baldwin] sounds like a psychotic narcissist. Instead of blaming NBC, I think Alec should consider that some people in America may not want to watch a man who cusses out his own 11-year-old daughter on a phone message. Oh, and the reason NBC occasionally puts on an hour long episode of Earl is because an hour of Earl gets better ratings than an Earl followed by a 30 Rock. It's called math, stupid."”

Baldwin then replied via The Huffington Post:

“My apologies to the cast and crews of 'My Name Is Earl' and 'Scrubs.' In my frustration with NBC's reprehensible promotion of '30 Rock', I took an unfortunate swipe at both of those shows and that was not cool.

“But, for Earl's creator, Greg Garcia, who referred to me as a "psychotic", I have only one question. Why are you Scientologists always rendering these medical opinions you aren't qualified to give?”

Regarding the Baldwin quotes, Greg Garcia, showrunner for "Earl" spoke about protecting his show in an NBC conference call this Friday morning. "I would never attack somebody or their show but if you attack me, I'm gonna come out swinging," said Garcia.

Also on the same conference call, "Earl" star Jason Lee joked that he "was friends with Alec Baldwin" and had put him up to it to generate publicity for the shows.