I think I found out why. From his wiki: Chong was arrested in October 2000 for allegedly making threatening phone calls to the filmmakers. In his suit, Chong claimed he had since been blackballed from Hollywood and blamed The Matrix creators and Warner Bros. for branding him a "terrorist".
I had heard that he wasn't offered roles in the sequels because he was being homophobic (pre-transition) towards the wachowskis
Probably the person who told me that just got the cause and effect mixed up. I imagine the content of those phone calls is where the homophobic behavior was documented
I’ve always assumed he left for “prude” reasons. I think the Wachowskis dedicated about an hour of screen time to orgy scenes across two seasons.
That’s a lot of orgy scenes that go on for minutes and minutes longer after viewers have already gotten the point. Seemed very excessive to me, a guy who likes and participates in orgies. If an actor does not like orgies, and if they had religious sensibilities or a strong sense of modesty, I can easily understand why they’d feel conflicted about that vision.
I remember renting the Matrix sequels many years ago to catch myself up and I got to the Zion orgy and I was like “Well then, that’s an orgy. Hmmm. Still going. Perhaps I don’t understand how long these things go on? I’ll get myself a snack and come back and… they are still orgying? What in tarnation… well, alright, it’s clearly not over yet, I guess there’s no rushing these things. Life in Zion is pretty stressful, you hater.”
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u/NoAssumptions731 2d ago
I think I found out why. From his wiki: Chong was arrested in October 2000 for allegedly making threatening phone calls to the filmmakers. In his suit, Chong claimed he had since been blackballed from Hollywood and blamed The Matrix creators and Warner Bros. for branding him a "terrorist".