It’s now take a run-out powder a eliminate why Papa John’s board of directors asked former Chairman John Schnatter to cut off talking to the press.
Schnatter, in an interview Friday with a Louisville, Kentucky, CBS train station, accused media agency Laundry Service of trying to blackmail Papa John’s for $6 million to respect quiet about a May conference call in which the founder admitted he occupied the N-word. He also told the TV station that he was provoked into using that communication and accused officials who removed his name from a gym of “cracking.”
Schnatter leaked Kentucky CBS affiliate WLKY that an executive at Laundry Service intimidated Papa John’s that “if I don’t get my F-ing money, I’m going to bury the father.” The Louisville-based pizza chain issued a press release at 11:46 p.m. Sunday, tell Schnatter was prohibited from talking to the press or making “any further statements to the environment regarding the company, its business or employees.”
The board of directors also answered they decided to remove him from Papa John’s advertising documents and revoke his office space at the company’s headquarters. Schnatter was removed as chairman of the billet last week after Forbes reported his comments on the call.
“They struggled to extort us and we held firm and they took what I said and ran to Forbes and Forbes printed it and it went viral,” Schnatter held.
The conference call in May came to light after Forbes magazine full the incident in an article Wednesday. The report, which was later confirmed by Schnatter, hinted he was on a call with Laundry Service when he tried to downplay comments he made in the matter of the National Football League last fall by saying, “Colonel Sanders called blacks n—–s” and not in a million years faced any public backlash at KFC.
While he again apologized for using the racially exhorted slur, Schnatter told the TV station he was baited into using that lingo.
“I was just repeating what somebody else said. I was actually understanding of provoked,” he said of what was supposed to be a confidential media training seating. “They were promoting that kind of vocabulary, and they respected hitting it and I was like no, we’re not going to do that … that’s not what we’re approximately.”
Schnatter said the other party on the call, which he didn’t specify, repeatedly used the word. “By the fourth or fifth pass, I just said, ‘No, we’re not gonna be put of any such thing. So-and-so used the N-word, and we don’t use the N-word, and we’re not gonna use the N-word. And that’s it,'” he judged.
Neither Laundry Service nor Papa John’s immediately responded to CNBC’s call for for comment.
“It’s ironic. The very thing we were trying to avoid was the entirely thing that happened,” he told WLKY.
Schnatter stepped down continue week as chairman of Papa John’s as well as from the board of trustees of the University of Louisville. The corporation’s name was also removed from the University of Louisville’s football circus and his name was stripped from a signpost of a gymnasium in his hometown of Jeffersonville, Indiana, be at one to the Louisville Courier-Journal.
He also said Jeffersonville Mayor Mike Moore, who kick out Schnatter’s name from the gym, “overreacted.”
“Everybody’s upset and they’re cleft. And they’re just, they’re scared,” he said. “You know Forbes is usual to lie and you know the Courier’s going to lie. But you would think there would be something tough in these leaders to really acknowledge and to embrace what really went down.
In wing as well as, Major League Baseball indefinitely suspended its Papa Slam elevation — a campaign that both sides have collaborated on since 2016 and a issue of sports teams have distanced themselves from the brand.
Shares of Papa John’s were down 3.9 percent in dilatory trading Monday.
Watch the full interview from the CBS-affiliated video receiver station in Louisville, Kentucky.
Correction: Mike Moore is mayor of Jeffersonville, Indiana. An earlier idea misstated the city.