Leah McSweeney’s and Caroline Manzo’s lawsuits in opposition to Bravo, defined

Fits could also be having a second, however relating to compelling authorized drama, Bravo has had the TV style on lock. The previous few years have been rife with court docket instances: Jen Shah’s fraud case and subsequent jail sentencing made Actual Housewives of Salt Lake Metropolis appointment TV, whereas Erika Jayne’s ex-husband’s embezzlement case — the disbarred lawyer stands accused of stealing from the family members of airplane crash victims — gave Actual Housewives of Beverly Hills certainly one of its buzziest storylines in years.

Nonetheless, the identical court docket drama viewers have develop into accustomed to watching on Bravo is at present affecting the community off-screen, as a number of ex-Bravolebrities are laying out behind-the-scenes grievances with producers by authorized means.

A sexual harassment lawsuit in opposition to Bravo filed by former Actual Housewives of New Jersey star Caroline Manzo seems to be stalling a season of the Peacock spinoff Actual Housewives Final Ladies Journey. In the meantime, former RHOBH star Brandi Glanville, Manzo’s alleged assailant, is threatening to sue Bravo for its remedy of her following the controversy. Moreover, ex-Actual Housewives of New York solid member Leah McSweeney is suing Bravo and Actual Housewives government producer Andy Cohen for discrimination and retaliation. (She’s additionally accused Cohen of doing cocaine with Actual Housewives, which might develop into a struggle of its personal.) Shortly after McSweeney’s submitting, Cohen’s lawyer, Orin Snyder, responded with a letter, claiming her grievance was “plagued by false, offensive, and defamatory statements.”

There’s additionally former Vanderpump Guidelines star Rachel Leviss, who’s surprisingly not making an attempt to sue Bravo post-Scandoval. Somewhat, she’s introduced a lawsuit alleging eavesdropping and revenge porn in opposition to her co-stars Tom Sandoval and Ariana Madix, concerning an express FaceTime name Sandoval recorded, which uncovered the affair.

This isn’t the primary time Bravo has been legally confronted over the best way reveals are made. In 2022, Actual Housewives of Atlanta OG NeNe Leakes sued Bravo for racial discrimination (she later dropped it). And final 12 months, former RHONY star Bethenny Frankel made considerably inconsistent and complicated efforts towards a “actuality reckoning,” which largely manifested in a podcast sequence. Nonetheless, her outspokenness about pay disparity, unsafe working circumstances, and the final energy dynamic between actuality stars and producers has clearly had a ripple impact within the Bravo neighborhood.

However because the Actual Housewives universe continues to develop and develop in recognition, stars of those applications are lastly questioning who’s chargeable for their very own actuality.

Which actuality stars are suing Bravo proper now?

Throughout final 12 months’s SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, Frankel introduced her efforts towards a reality-TV union in a Selection interview. In August, protection legal professionals Mark Geragos and Bryan Freedman, reportedly representing Frankel and different actuality stars, despatched NBCUniversal (which owns Bravo and Peacock) a proper request to protect paperwork probably related to a lawsuit. In it, they accused the media firm of “grotesque and wicked mistreatment” and overlaying up “acts of sexual violence.” (An NBCUniversal spokesperson responded that the corporate is “dedicated to sustaining a protected and respectful office” and takes “well timed, applicable motion” towards complaints.) Since then, Frankel’s claimed she’s “not hiring legal professionals” nor suing Bravo however serving to different aggrieved actuality stars search justice. Whereas not the primary to confront actuality producers over working circumstances, she appears to have supplied fellow Bravolebs a framework for addressing the ability dynamics of their workplaces.

On January 26, Deadline reported that Manzo was suing Bravo and its affiliated corporations — NBCUniversal, Shed Media, Forest Productions, Warner Bros. Leisure, and Peacock TV — for “encouraging” and “permitting” Glanville to sexually harass her throughout the filming of the Morocco-set season of Actual Housewives Final Ladies Journey. Within the grievance, Manzo’s attorneys element that Glanville allegedly “[held] MANZO down together with her physique” and “thrust her tongue in MANZO’s mouth” throughout a celebration. When Manzo received as much as go to the lavatory, she claims that Glanville adopted her and continued to assault her.

Strikingly, Manzo will not be suing Glanville for sexual harassment or assault. As an alternative, her lawsuit seeks to carry Bravo chargeable for hiring Glanville regardless of her “prior deviant sexual proclivities and sexually harassing conduct” in addition to “ply[ing] GLANVILLE with copious quantities of alcohol in order that she would act outrageous.” She’s searching for unspecified damages.

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Alcohol can be related in McSweeney’s grievance, which is already proving to be a bigger level of competition amongst followers. Earlier than she filed court docket paperwork, the streetwear founder had spoken publicly about producers’ alleged disregard for her and different solid members’ sobriety on RHONY and season three of RHUGT in a Vainness Truthful exposé.

In her lawsuit, McSweeney accuses Bravo and its third-party producers of “participating in guerrilla-type psychological warfare supposed to pressurize [her] right into a psychological break and trigger [her] to relapse.” Most of her accusations deal with producers’ alleged failure to accommodate her “bipolar, melancholy, and anxiousness problems,” along with her alcohol habit. In her grievance, she references an incident the place she was allegedly prohibited from leaving filming to go to her dying grandmother or else be terminated.

Crucial commenters on social media have argued that it’s McSweeney’s private duty to keep up her personal sobriety. However Dan Braverman, an employment regulation lawyer at Romano Regulation, says her habit to alcohol could be deemed “a incapacity underneath federal, state, and native discrimination legal guidelines.”

“This is able to necessitate that McSweeney be supplied cheap lodging and never be discriminated in opposition to or fired for that cause,” he informed Vox. Whereas Braverman notes that McSweeney’s standing as a contract employee would usually complicate this example, in New York, the place McSweeney has filed her grievance, the Metropolis Human Rights Regulation says that every one impartial contractors “have the suitable to obtain cheap lodging for wants associated to disabilities.”

Nonetheless, some viewers say that McSweeney’s claims are undermined by her previous conduct on the franchise. In her first season of RHONY, she says she began ingesting once more six months previous to filming. A clip of McSweeney encouraging her RHUGT solid members to drink as a result of they had been boring her has since resurfaced. Naysayers additionally level out that she selected to return to Bravo following her destructive experiences on RHONY. Whereas this doesn’t mechanically disprove her claims — folks return to disagreeable job conditions out of necessity — it could possibly be used in opposition to her in court docket, in keeping with Braverman.

“If McSweeney voluntarily selected to enter this setting once more by rejoining the present and inspiring the conduct she is now alleging was discriminatory, the protection might argue that she contributed to some or all of her damages,” he mentioned.

Who’s in charge for actuality?

Nonetheless, the overwhelmingly crucial response to McSweeney’s claims displays an ethical quandary that’s all the time undermined the pleasure of viewing actuality TV — particularly within the Bravo universe.

That dilemma has develop into extra pronounced as high-stakes, “earth-shattering” drama has more and more develop into the norm and desired end result on Bravo. However after an explosive dishonest scandal that incites cyberbullying or a storyline that culminates in a DUI, who’s chargeable for the devastation that’s left behind?

As demonstrated by Manzo, McSweeney, Leakes, and Frankel, that query of accountability is partially a authorized matter concerning what actuality performers are owed. As Braverman famous, most actuality stars are impartial contractors — not workers, who’re extra completely protected underneath federal legal guidelines. However, legality doesn’t all the time overlap with morality. Nor do the present state of employment legal guidelines negate the moral drawback of actuality performers being overworked, underpaid, mistreated, or positioned in dangerous work environments.

Nonetheless, the purpose at which producers are anticipated to intervene when, say, a Actual Housewife has an excessive amount of to drink stays murky. On the very least, it ought to most likely occur when somebody, as Manzo’s alleging, is committing against the law in opposition to one other individual. However what about when somebody is destroying their very own life? How does manufacturing proceed when, not like McSweeney, a actuality star isn’t even conscious that they may probably be an addict and also can proceed their alcohol consumption off-camera?

The difficulty has introduced itself with Actual Housewives of Orange County solid member Shannon Beador, who obtained a DUI final 12 months following a hit-and-run and was sentenced to 3 years of probation. For a number of seasons now, together with the most recent season 17, Beador’s drunken conduct has been a degree of concern amongst her castmates, and she or he’s repeatedly denied having an issue.

This sort of private wreckage makes for “good” TV, which is in the end good for Bravo. Likewise, producers and editors have seemingly performed into Beador’s ingesting storyline, drawing comedy from her behavior of creating inebriated cellphone calls to her fellow Housewives and forgetting them the subsequent day. Shortly after her DUI arrest, she was additionally permitted to attend Bravo’s annual conference, BravoCon — her presence being considerably of a draw for the occasion. There, she introduced that she accomplished “28 days of behavioral wellness” with an alcohol specialist.

Beador has been a completely compelling and pleasant individual to look at exterior her troubling ingesting habits. Nonetheless, her story arc represents the chance and subsequent discomfort of capturing somebody’s life over a protracted time frame, which may usually illuminate a sample of harmful habits and poor decision-making. It’s completely different from watching a contest present like The Bachelor and Love Island the place solid members are positioned in a brief, extra managed setting. On extra loosely structured, slice-of-life reveals like Actual Housewives or Vanderpump Guidelines, there’s an understanding that the solid is partially narrativizing their very own lives.

It’s widespread information that these plots are produced and edited to various levels. However within the case of getting a seven-month-long affair together with your shut pal’s life associate, for instance, these information can’t actually be manipulated. This actuality makes Leviss’s lawsuit post-Scandoval a bit tougher to swallow.

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Following the scandal, Leviss determined to forgo filming the following season 11. As an alternative, she launched a podcast referred to as Rachel Goes Rogue, detailing her aspect of the controversy. She additionally appeared on Simply B with Bethenny Frankel, the place she mentioned the machinations behind her so-called “villain edit.”

With out downplaying the potential hurt Madix and Sandoval might have precipitated on this soiled FaceTime debacle, it’s arduous to not view her lawsuit as an try to regain management of a story the place she inarguably solid herself as a villain. Loads of Bravolebrities are already doing this by means of podcasts and tell-all interviews. However Leviss’s lawsuit represents a brand new technique by which Bravolebs could also be dealing with the dissatisfaction and humiliation they expertise on their reveals sooner or later and are already presently doing.

For now, it’s unclear whether or not Madix really distributed the video, and if she did, whether or not it was with an intent to hurt Leviss. What’s extra firmly specified by the grievance, although, is an influence dynamic the place Bravo and different Vanderpump Guidelines solid members benefited from her dangerous choices. General, it looks as if actuality stars and followers are nonetheless reconciling whether or not that is an moral situation or simply the inherent discount of doing actuality TV. Perhaps it’s each.