The cleaning woman made headlines for small behind-the-scenes changes before the Fox series was hit by a sex-abuse scandal in 2026, a year after the show went on the air.
Based on the 2017 Argentine TV show The girl who cleans, The cleaning woman released in 2022 and followed a former surgeon Thony (Elodie Yung) who was in the US on an expired visa. To help ensure the treatment of the bone marrow for his son (Sebastien, to Valentino LaSalle i Khalen Roman Sanchez), Thony, who had a rare and life-threatening medical disorder, made a living as a cleaning service worker, until she witnessed a murder and became a cleaner and doctor for the mob.
In addition to Yung, the show starred Aand Canto, Oliver Hudson, Martha Millan, Sean Lew and more It ran for four seasons with showrunner changes and multiple character deaths affecting the trajectory of the show.
The Fox series made headlines again in January 2026 when he is an executive producer Timothy Busfield he was named in an arrest warrant after being accused of child sexual abuse by two minors he worked with on set. The actor, who is married to Melissa Gilbert, was not immediately arrested and said in an investigative interview cited in the arrest warrant that it was “highly unlikely” he had physical contact with the accusers.
Drama alert! Not everyone gets along at work, but when it comes to television, some of the behind-the-scenes drama turns into high-profile confrontations. Us Weekly has rounded up just a few of the scandalous issues that happened off-camera that ultimately changed things on-camera. When Katherine Heigl left Grey’s Anatomy in 2010, she said (…)
Keep scrolling for a full breakdown, including other times the show was plagued with controversy:
Showrunner changes
Warner Bros. Television Studios acquired the remake rights on the Argentine television program in Spanish The girl who cleans in 2019 and later developed The cleaning woman. looking around was set to write and develop the series adaptation along with other executive producers Melissa Carter i Shay Mitchell.
Once the show was picked up, Carter became the showrunner but Kwok was promoted to the position in season 2. Fox brought Jeannine Renshaw as executive producer and coshowrunner a season later, but neither Renshaw nor Kwok returned for season 4. The cleaning woman then it was led by Daniel Cerone as the next executive producer and new showrunner, but was ultimately not renewed.
Shocking departure of Oliver Hudson
After being introduced as one of the main characters, Hudson’s Garrett Miller he was killed off two seasons into the show.
“This was a very difficult decision to make, but a death that we knew would shock our audience and affect Thony the most. As writers, we wanted Agent Miller’s death to mean something,” Carter told TVLine in December 2022. “The hard part was that it was right for the narrative, but incredibly difficult to kill off one of our favorite and kind actors. crew (that) when the script came out, we to have crew members begging us to write a different ending.”
Carter said Hudson was a “total professional,” adding, “When he signed on for this character, he knew it might only be for a season or two. He called me at the end of Season 1 and asked what he had left to do with Garrett Miller.”
She concluded, “This is something I was creatively ready for, but it was still the hardest decision we had to make on the show. Long before any of the roles were cast, when Miranda and I pitched the pilot to Fox, we suggested killing off her character at the end of Season 1. But after we fell in love with Oliver, we put it off as long as we could.”
The off-screen death of Adan Canto
After a private battle with appendix cancer, Canto died aged 42 in January 2024. Three months later, his character in The Cleaning Lady was canceled and Arman was killed moments before returning him to Nadia.Eva De Dominici) in exchange for a ransom.
“When it happened it was a shock to us, but we knew he was struggling and we also knew he really didn’t want people to know the reasons (he couldn’t work),” Kwok told The Hollywood Reporter at the time. “It was a challenge for us, because we had to balance knowing what we were doing and figuring out how to move forward with it, and being sensitive to him and his family.”
The showrunners revealed that the original plan he had to temporarily write the character of Canto of the show in hopes of returning it.
“We were already going to have his parents and his family on the show,” Kwok said. “When we had to change, we realized we still wanted to create that space for Arman to come back. We decided to continue the story surrounding his backstory so we could all explore his character through Thony and Nadia, and learn about Arman in a different way.”
She continued: “He was okay with that. He was, of course, heartbroken that he couldn’t continue this journey with us, so he wanted to support us as much as he could.”
Timothy Busfield’s sexual abuse allegations
Us Weekly confirmed in January 2026 that Busfield was named in a New Mexico arrest warrant after he was accused of child sexual abuse by twin boys on the set of The Cleaning Lady while serving as director of the Fox drama.
Busfield did not publicly address the scandal, but a police officer wrote in his report that Busfield and his wife they claimed they had it “a relationship” with the families of the alleged victims outside of work.