As reality giant Bravo dodges multiple allegations against it, an attorney for one of its former stars says that the network seems to think it’s above the law.
Leah McSweeney’s lawyer Gary Adelman made the remarks to Page Six as video surfaced that shows McSweeney’s former boss, Andy Cohen, inviting a then-employee to watch him have sex, and as McSweeney filed new court papers defending her lawsuit against the network.
Adelman says the fact that Cohen has kept his job amid the video scandal “buttresses” McSweeney’s case by showing that the network’s executives “really do not care about their employees.”
Brandi Glanville, who, like McSweeney, has appeared on several of Bravo’s “Real Housewives” shows, made a legal complaint in February about a video that “Housewives” executive producer Cohen sent to her by text message in which he said he planned to have sex with Bravo star .
On Tuesday, the US Sun published the video for the first time.
Cohen apologized back in February for sending the video message and said it was “clearly in jest.” Bravo said it has investigated the incident. But Bravo said it uncovered no wrongdoing and Cohen does not appear to have faced disciplinary action.
“[Usually] if a person associated or employed with a company… sent a video like that to one of his employees, he would be immediately terminated,” Adelman told Page Six Thursday.
“It buttresses our claims and sends the message that [Bravo executives] ‘think they are above the employment law’ and really do not care at all about their employees. Especially the women who have made these show successful.”
Meanwhile, McSweeney filed a response to Bravo’s motion to dismiss McSweeney’s February suit, in which she claimed that, among other things, producers of “Real Housewives” shows tried to get her to fall off the wagon in an attempt to drive up the show’s ratings and that Cohen sexually harassed her by discussing her breast implants and her sexual history. (Cohen has strenuously denied all the allegations).
In May, Bravo’s attorneys filed a motion to dismiss McSweeney’s suit, calling her claims “threadbare” and Cohen’s new court documents stated that McSweeney’s allegations are “threadbare” and arguing that her discrimination claims “impermissibly seek to abridge Defendants’ First Amendment rights to tailor and adjust the messages they wish to convey in their creative works, including through cast selection and other creative decisions.”
In papers filed Wednesday and seen by Page Six, her lawyers Adelman Matz wrote that the defendents, which include Bravo, Cohen and Shed Media, a production company that makes the show “evidently
believe that, merely because they are in the business of filming and displaying ‘reality’ television, the
First Amendment provides them the unfettered right to discriminate against their employees.”
It added that if that argument were valid, then “every employer in the entertainment industry would
be permitted to engage in invidious discrimination against their employees” and that “the First Amendment does not immunize [them] from liability simply because [they] claim to be in the business of creative expression.”
