Within the newest of a string of lawsuits indicating critical bother in Bravoland, former Vanderpump Guidelines solid member Religion Stowers is accusing NBCUniversal of racial harassment, in keeping with a grievance filed on Friday.
Stowers, who appeared in seasons 4 and 5 of the truth sequence offshoot of The Actual Housewives of Beverly Hills, claims within the go well with that castmate Lala Kent held a knife to her neck and threatened to “reduce a bitch” in the course of the filming of Vanderpump Guidelines, which follows the employees of Housewives star Lisa Vanderpump’s Los Angeles restaurant, SUR.
Vanderpump herself is known as within the grievance from Stowers, who alleges that the truth TV star threatened to have her faraway from her namesake present if Stowers couldn’t proceed to work alongside her alleged assailant. The present’s government producer additionally discouraged her from reporting the incident with Kent to native police, Stowers claims within the submitting.
Stowers claims within the go well with that she was paid $5,000 to seem in season 4 of Vanderpump Guidelines and demoted to “volunteer” for season 5.
The ensemble castmember additionally alleges that she was subjected to common racial slurs and mocked on set for her “nappy hair.” Her former Vanderpump gamers Stassi Schroeder and Kristen Doute allegedly mentioned she was “a serial felony who had been drugging and robbing males all through Los Angeles”; the 2 additionally accused her of going AWOL from the army, she claims within the go well with. Schroeder and Doute have been fired from the present after Stowers instructed an Instagram Reside viewers about these alleged incidents in the summertime of 2020.
“[This was] an astonishingly cynical act of performative allyship,” Stowers says of NBCUniversal’s dismissal of her two castmates, which got here swiftly because the nation was reckoning with its systemic racial injustices within the wake of the homicide of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
Notably, Stowers has retained authorized illustration by Bryan Freedman and Marc Geragos, the identical attorneys that labored for former Housewives star Bethenny Frankel, The Actual Housewives of New York star turned CEO who has known as for a “actuality reckoning” to finish the exploitation of solid members’ lives and security for community rankings and revenue.
In a press release despatched to The Hollywood Reporter on Friday, the legislation agency Freedmam, Taitelman and Cooley known as out NBCUniversal and the manufacturing home behind Vanderpump Guidelines for numerous infractions it says they’ve dedicated towards employed expertise.
“NBC and Evolution clearly imagine that office security guidelines, employment legal guidelines, and fundamental decency don’t apply to these in actuality TV. Vicious assaults, racist harassment, and impugning the service of veterans are apparently acceptable to NBC and Evolution for the sake of rankings. Religion didn’t know what sort of cesspool she had discovered herself in and reported this illegal habits to her superiors. In response, she was demoted to ‘volunteer’ and stripped of her already meager compensation,” the agency wrote.
NBCUniversal didn’t instantly reply to an e mail from THR in search of touch upon the case and accusations.