Former ‘Ellen DeGeneres Show’ Employees Come Forward About Sexual Misconduct From Producers
Thirty-six former Ellen DeGeneres Show employees have spoken to BuzzFeed News about sexual misconduct and harassment on the show’s set.
The allegations come amid an internal investigation into the show’s “toxic work environment.”
Amid an internal investigation over claims of racism and bullying, former Ellen DeGeneres Show staffers have come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct among the show’s top executives.
In a new report from BuzzFeed News (which broke the original story about the “toxic work environment” on Ellen’s set), 36 former employees anonymously chronicled and corroborated multiple disturbing instances of harassment.
One former employee said head writer/exec producer Kevin Leman asked if he could give him a hand job and oral sex at a 2013 company party, while others said they saw Leman grope production assistants. He’s also been accused of making “sexually explicit comments,” often at lower-level employees. Leman has denied “any kind of sexual impropriety” in a statement to BuzzFeed News, saying in part that he is “devastated beyond belief that this kind of malicious and misleading article could be published.”
Former employees also said executive producer Ed Glavin “had a reputation for being handsy with women” and accused him of “creepy touching” that he got away with due to the “culture of fear.”
On top of this, a former employee said co-executive producer Jonathan Norman attempted to perform oral sex on him after a “grooming” process—which was corroborated by three of the former employee’s colleagues. Norman is “100 percent categorically denying these allegations” and has accused this former staffer of having “ulterior motives for bringing down the show.”
These allegations come after Ellen’s statement regarding her show’s work environment, where she said, in part, “On day one of our show, I told everyone in our first meeting that The Ellen DeGeneres Show would be a place of happiness—no one would ever raise their voice, and everyone would be treated with respect. Obviously, something changed, and I am disappointed to learn that this has not been the case.”
Meanwhile, Warner Bros. released a statement to BuzzFeed News saying that they “hoped to determine the validity and extent of publicly reported allegations and to understand the full breadth of the show’s day-to-day culture.”
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