Actual Housewives kingpin Andy Cohen has confronted a lot of accusations and unsavory allegations of late, however a cocaine fueled favoritism and booze bullying lawsuit as we speak from Leah McSweeney has actually raised his ire.
Late tonight after phrase of the New York filed motion seeped out, a consultant for Cohen instructed Deadline “the claims towards Andy are fully false!”
By no means one to assert his is or ever was a saint, the usually TMI Cohen additionally wasn’t significantly shocked by Tuesday’s submitting by RH and Final Ladies Journey vet McSweeney towards him, Bravo, NBCUniversal, manufacturing firm Shed Media and varied producers, I hear. In any case, McSweeney had brazenly threatened final yr to take the gang to courtroom when she had her personal employment discrimination motion with the Equal Employment Alternative Fee tossed out.
With that proviso and with the Bravoverse underneath such scrutiny proper now from a variety of lawsuits and legal professionals, the defendants most likely hoped McSweeney wouldn’t go all scorched Earth on them like she did.
The former Actual Housewives of New York Metropolis star actually did shoot off a flamethrower in what she says was a definite effort to cease her from exercising her proper to stay sober.
Decrying a “rotted office tradition that uniquely relied on pressuring its workers to devour alcohol,” the swimsuit goes on to assert that RH franchise EP Cohen “engages in cocaine use with Housewives and different Bravolebrities that he employs.” The submitting additionally alleges that Cohen flatters the “Housewives with whom he makes use of cocaine with extra favorable therapy and edits.”
Making it very private for McSweeney herself, the swimsuit states “defendants with the information that Ms. McSweeney struggled with alcohol use dysfunction, colluded together with her colleagues to stress Ms. McSweeney to drink, retaliated towards her when she wished to remain sober, and deliberately failed to offer cheap lodging that will help her efforts to remain sober and in a position to carry out.”
Whereas unscripted exhibits have at all times attracted lawsuits like they entice narcissists, Bethenny Frankel’s self-described “actuality reckoning” warfare final yr towards the “sordid and darkish underbelly of NBC’s extensively consumed actuality TV universe” actually lit the cannons to fireplace at will. Taking goal on the restrictive NDAs and manipulation and thoughts video games allegedly going down on unscripted exhibits, Frankel’s major lawyer Bryan Freedman has put Bravo and NBCU on authorized discover.
Even with NBCU promising stricter office conduct pointers for its actuality TV choices, a slew of sexual assault and sexual harassment fits have adopted in current months. Whereas NBCU isn’t the one media large with such issues (simply say the phrases Netflix and Love Is Blind round a courthouse or two, to see what I imply), they’re typically within the seedy highlight.
Previously three months alone, the authorized motion has gotten extra down and soiled than ever. Final October, Marco Vega, the butler on the second season of Peacock‘s The Actual Housewives Final Ladies Journey, filed a lawsuit claiming he was sexually assaulted by forged members Brandi Glanville and Phaedra Parks. In December, RH alum Caroline Manzo claimed fellow Actual Housewives star Glanville sexually assaulted her through the Morocco filming of Peacock‘s The Actual Housewives Final Ladies Journey. Each Vega and Manzo’s fits had Bravo, Forest Productions, Warner Bros., NBCU, Shed Media and Peacock as defendants.
Final week, Glanville’s lawyer Freedman and Mark Geragos put NBCU, WBD and Shed Media on the scolding seat with a letter alleging Andy Cohen sexually harassed their shopper.
Citing the “abusive practices of the fact TV business,” the legal professionals stated in a letter to the C-suites that an apparently drunken Cohen despatched Glanville a video in 2022 the place he instructed her that he, an brazenly homosexual man, wished her to observe him have intercourse with “one other Bravo star that night time,” aka Kate Chastain. Termed as an “extraordinary abuse of energy” by Glanville, the allegations quickly noticed Cohen taking to social media to say it was all a joke that Glanville was in on. On Twitter/X, Cohen acknowledged “it was completely inappropriate and I apologize.”
That wasn’t sufficient for Glanville and her legal professionals, who quickly afterwards on February 23 requested Comcast CEO Brian Roberts to “do the appropriate factor” and hearth Cohen. Glanville herself says she nonetheless hasn’t acquired a private sorry from Cohen.
Time is ticking.
