Mr. Beast, the globally popular YouTube star, is facing fresh controversy this week after a number of former contestants in his upcoming Beast Games have alleged they suffered sexual harassment and “chronic mistreatment” during their stint with the reality TV competition. The lawsuit also lists Amazon, which produced the show, as a defendant in the case.
There have been other recent problems for the viral star, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson. Earlier this month, Donaldson hired a renowned lawyer to conduct an audit of his company, and to reportedly help him fend off allegations made by a former employee who has been posting widely viewed videos on YouTube claiming Donaldson is a “sociopath” and a “fraud.”
The new lawsuit compounds Donaldson’s problems. Variety, which originally broke the story about the suit, uploaded a copy of the litigation to the web. The complaint, which was filed on behalf of five anonymous former contestants, alleges that the defendants “created working conditions that jeopardized the safety of workers, including by not providing sufficient food or drink…not having adequate medical staff on site and not providing reasonable medical care, forcing them not to sleep, and forcing them to participate in games that unreasonably risked physical and mental injury.”
While the claims are serious, the ones provided are not always super specific. For instance, the lawsuit makes broad claims about sexual discrimination on set but doesn’t provide any concrete examples of it—at least not publicly. The section on sexual harassment has been redacted in an effort to “limit public viewing in a good faith effort to comply with Defendants’ overbroad confidentiality provisions (which Plaintiffs allege are unenforceable), as well as to preserve the confidentiality and privacy interests of the Plaintiffs who wish to avoid opprobrium,” the lawsuit states.
A quote from one of the defendants is provided as such: “I wanted to join because I was a fan of MrBeast and his videos made me smile during the COVID-19 pandemic. I expected to be challenged, but I didn’t think I would be treated like nothing — less than nothing. And as one of the women, I can say it absolutely felt like a hostile environment for us. We honestly could not have been respected less — as people, much less employees — if they tried.”
The closest thing to a specific complaint that the litigation gets is a mention of an employee handbook that was apparently distributed during the shoot that encouraged the male talent to “be idiots” and that claimed it’s okay for the male contestants to “be childish,” presumably because it made for better content.
The suit also claims that the production broke California laws by misclassifying the contestants’ employment status to the Nevada Film Commission to receive a $2 million tax credit. Here, again, the complaint is redacted, so it’s difficult to fully grasp what the companies are being accused of. The complaint claims that the defendants used this misclassification “as a false justification to avoid paying employment taxes and to spare the Production the costs of implementing various employment protections required under California law, including, minimum wages, overtime, mandatory meal and rest breaks, workers compensation benefits, itemized wage statements and timely payment of wages and reimbursements.”
A New York Times story published in August outlines similar concerns about the working conditions on the set of Beast Games but did not mention claims of sexual harassment. Instead, the story catalogs a long list of other complaints, some of which are more serious than others. For instance, some participants claimed that they had been underfed and only provided two, woefully small meals a day (the show maintains that they provided contestants three meals a day). The more serious allegations in the story involve contestants who claim that they were not provided medicine when they asked for it (one person said they were denied their insulin in a timely fashion). In some cases, contestants received their medicine “hours, or even days, after their scheduled dosing times,” the story claims. Some contestants were hospitalized as a result of some of the challenges, the story also notes.
The Times story also mentions that Amazon originally advertised the competition as only involving 1,000 contestants, whereas when the competition actually started Donaldson revealed that the number would actually be 2,000. Some contestants felt that they had been deceived about their chances of winning the $5 million.
Gizmodo reached out to Alex Spiro, an attorney who is said to be representing Donaldson, for comment on the recent litigation. We also reached out to Amazon.
This obviously doesn’t look great for the world’s biggest YouTube star, though it’s difficult to discern how serious the offenses actually are, given the limited information in the complaint. The Times story from August cites contestants who said that during their initial screening, they were asked whether they would be willing to be thrown off a boat, buried alive, or “travel to outer space” to win the prize money. They were also apparently warned that participation in the games could lead to “death, illness, or serious bodily injury, including, but not limited to exhaustion, dehydration, overexertion, burns, and heat stroke.” As deranged as those contractual stipulations are, anyone who agrees to possibly die to participate in a reality TV show shouldn’t be that surprised when the catering isn’t exactly top-notch.
