While reality giant Bravo avoids numerous allegations, the lawyer of one of its former stars explains that the channel apparently believes it is above the law.
Leah McSweeney’s attorney, Gary Adelman, made the remarks to Page Six as video surfaced showing McSweeney’s former boss Andy Cohen inviting a then-employee to watch him have sex, and as McSweeney filed new court documents to defend herself against her lawsuit against the network.
Adelman says the fact that Cohen kept his job despite the video scandal “reinforces” McSweeney’s position by showing that the network’s executives “really don’t care about their employees.”
Brandi Glanville, who like McSweeney has appeared on several of Bravo’s “Real Housewives” shows, filed suit in February over a video texted to her by “Housewives” executive producer Cohen in which he said he planned to have sex with Bravo star Kate Chastain of “Below Deck.”
On Tuesday, the US newspaper Sun published the video for the first time.
Cohen apologized for sending the video message in February, saying it was “clearly a joke.” Bravo said the incident was investigated. However, Bravo said no wrongdoing was uncovered and Cohen did not appear to have been disciplined.
“If a person associated with or employed by a company … were to send such a video to one of its employees, they would (typically) be fired immediately,” Adelman told Page Six on Thursday.
“It reinforces our claims and sends the message that (Bravo executives) ‘think they are above labor law’ and really don’t care about their employees. Especially the women who made this show successful.”
Meanwhile, McSweeney has filed a response to Bravo’s motion to dismiss McSweeney’s February lawsuit, in which she claims, among other things, that “Real Housewives” producers tried to get her to relapse to boost the show’s ratings and that Cohen sexually harassed her by discussing her breast implants and sexual history. (Cohen has vigorously denied all allegations.)
In May, Bravo’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss McSweeney’s lawsuit, calling her claims “spurious.” Cohen’s new court documents say McSweeney’s allegations are “spurious,” and argue that her discrimination claims “impermissibly seek to curtail Defendants’ free speech rights to tailor and customize the messages they seek to convey in their creative works, including through casting selections and other creative decisions.”
In documents filed Wednesday and viewed by Page Six, their attorneys Adelman Matz wrote that the defendants, which include Bravo, Cohen and Shed Media, a production company that produces the show, “obviously
believe that just because they are in the business of recording and broadcasting reality TV, the
The First Amendment gives them the unconditional right to discriminate against their employees.”
It was added that if this argument were valid, “every employer in the entertainment industry
may discriminate against their employees in an abhorrent manner” and “the First Amendment does not exempt them from liability simply because they claim to be engaged in the field of creative expression.”
