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And now for some other stories mixing Hollywood labor, international relations, and politics…

Ever since the so-called “Reality Reckoning” of 2023, when Bethenny Frankel and a few fellow Bravo-verse insurgents decided that tequila-fueled humiliation should come with worker protections, NBCUniversal and its unscripted partners have drawn from a familiar arsenal of corporate containment. They’ve denied that reality stars are employees, and funneled complaints into the black hole of arbitration. And when things have gotten truly messy, they’ve unsheathed the First Amendment like a saber, defending their constitutional right to cast whomever they like and ply them with unlimited booze. But there’s always room for more adventurous lawyering. Which brings me to Below Deck Sailing Yacht, Bravo’s glossy Mediterranean travelogue, now buffeted by a serious legal squall after five seasons. NBCU and Endemol, the series’ production company, are facing a lawsuit over the alleged misbehavior of star Gary King. A complaint filed in February by makeup artist Samantha Suarez paints King as a serial harasser and drunkard who once trapped her in a hotel room and attempted to assault her. Joining her is Grey Duddleston, a camera operator and Suarez’s former boyfriend. Duddleston claims he witnessed King’s conduct toward other women firsthand, including one incident he says he reported in real time, only to be investigated himself for misusing the production’s walkie-talkie system. (King’s lawyer hasn’t responded to a request for comment.) Both Suarez and Duddleston allege that after they raised concerns, they were sent home, blacklisted from future seasons, and added to a covert “do not hire” list. As for King, producers allegedly tried to fire him—only to be overruled by NBCU executives who, according to the complaint, didn’t want to “sacrifice [their] cash cow for the sake of two crew members.” Last week, Endemol’s litigator Anthony Oncidi responded with a motion to dismiss. He’s looking to sideline Duddleston via arbitration, while arguing that Suarez can’t invoke California labor law because a) King is a South African national, and b) the alleged misconduct would have occurred thousands of miles away, on the high seas and in a hotel in Sardinia. Let California weigh in, Oncidi warns, and we may as well rechristen the Los Angeles Superior Court as The Hague. (See the brief for yourself.) High-flying attorneys Bryan Freedman and Mark Geragos, who represent Suarez, might welcome the comparison. In the two years since Frankel enlisted their services—and Freedman rather dramatically declared “war”—they’ve become the vanguard of the reality TV resistance, filing more cases under the “reckoning” banner than anyone else. There have been modest victories: Last December, the National Labor Relations Board recognized that reality TV contestants can, in fact, be “employees,” and filed charges against the producers of Netflix’s Love Is Blind. But progress has been halting. A judge ordered Freedman and Geragos client Renee Poche, a Love Is Blind contestant, into arbitration after she tried to fight a $4 million NDA claim. And the N.L.R.B.’s newfound spine may amount to nothing if the less labor-friendly Trump administration reverses course. For now, the waters remain choppy. And that makes the looming match between Freedman and Oncidi worth watching. (The pair previously jousted in the infamous CAA v. UTA “lawless midnight raid” case.) Freedman will need to convince a judge that California does, in fact, govern Suarez’s claims—and that the producers’ handling of King didn’t just enable misconduct, but potentially ratified it. He’ll be steering this fight, of course, alongside another high-profile legal saga: defending It Ends With Us director Justin Baldoni in his battle with Blake Lively over alleged sexual harassment. In that case, ironically, Freedman will be downplaying objections regarding on-set behavior. Adventurous lawyering, indeed.

Lawyers for Paramount Global and CBS are racking up the billable hours these days between Trump’s 60 Minutes lawsuit, the molasses-paced F.C.C. review of the Skydance deal, and a turf war with Sony over Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune. But there’s another case that’s been overlooked: It involves a video editor, a diversity program, and a few overly zealous lawyers from the Stephen Miller school of cultural grievance. For the past year, CBS has been the target of a legal campaign claiming that its efforts to diversify its workforce amounted to discrimination against white men. The suits come courtesy of America First Legal Foundation, the conservative legal machine chaired by Miller, Trump’s top policy advisor. One such case, brought by SEAL Team writer Brian Beneker, was settled last month, prompting America First to declare victory in its crusade against corporate D.E.I. initiatives.

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But several lawsuits remain. One of the more interesting cases involves Andre Rhoden, a freelance video editor who briefly worked at CBS’s local stations in Los Angeles. In 2023, he applied for a full-time publicity job in the news division. The position went to someone else—a younger Hispanic woman—and Rhoden says his freelance work soon dried up. He blamed CBS’s diversity push, which had gathered steam under CBS News leader Wendy McMahon, who took over the news and stations group in 2021with a mandate to modernize the organization. Unfortunately for Rhoden, the facts weren’t terribly cooperative. After CBS filed an anti-SLAPP motion, Judge Bruce Iwasaki reviewed the complaint to determine whether it had minimal merit. He ruled that it did not. Though Rhoden claimed a supervisor once grumbled about “too many white males,” Iwasaki pointed out that Rhoden had identified himself to CBS as “Hispanic/Latino.” The judge also noted that CBS’s local stations had broadly slashed contractor work in 2023, including roles held by women and minorities—hardly evidence of a targeted purge. In the end, only a single claim—gender discrimination—survived. CBS had argued that its First Amendment rights should shield it from such a claim, but the judge disagreed. (Here’s the ruling.) CBS also put forward the usual suite of nondiscriminatory explanations, which may yet carry the day, but for now, they’ll have to be scrutinized later in the case. Still, by successfully beating claims of discrimination on the basis of race, age, and military status (Rhoden was a veteran), CBS has scored a clear victory. The parent company and McMahon have been dismissed too, meaning CBS is entitled to recoup its early legal fees. One assumes America First will be footing the bill—which, given the going rate for white-collar litigation in Los Angeles, will not be cheap.

A couple of weeks ago, around the release of Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, Vulture ran a buzzy, if curious, piece claiming that Hollywood studios were “freaking out” over the filmmaker’s deal with Warner Bros. to reclaim ownership of his movie after 25 years. If the story had stopped there, fine. But the narrative has hardened into the false notion that studios are panicking over the “very dangerous” precedent of a Black filmmaker negotiating a win. Over the weekend, that notion made its way into the op-ed pages of The New York Times. The issue here isn’t simply that the evidence of a racial double standard is thinner than a Stephen Miller lawsuit. Vulture’s premise of a shaken Hollywood was sourced to unnamed executives. Also, as readers know, copyright reversion is not some radical concept. Under U.S. law, authors are entitled to regain domestic rights after 35 years. Coogler simply negotiated a shorter timeline. That’s unusual, sure, but the idea that studio executives are losing sleep over Coogler regaining rights to a film he created from scratch? Please. Anyway, Hollywood studios are more concerned about a different copyright case—one involving a songwriter named Cyril Vetter. Back in the 1960s, Vetter was a minor figure in the Southern music scene, co-authoring a modest hit called “Double Shot (of My Baby’s Love).” He sold the rights to a publisher for one dollar. The song was eventually recorded by the Swingin’ Medallions, landed on the Billboard charts, and has been covered numerous times over the decades. Bruce Springsteen once called it the “greatest fraternity rock song of all time.” Years later, Vetter—who runs a production company developing a television series about a blues musician, among other projects—looked to the U.S. copyright termination provisions to claw back ownership of “Double Shot.” Last July, Vetter scored an unexpected, sweeping victory. A federal judge in Louisiana ruled that Vetter had not only successfully recaptured the rights, but that he had done so throughout the world. That flies in the face of the long-standing assumption that U.S. copyright termination rights stop at the border. Citing a 150-year-old international pact in which countries agreed to treat foreign authors as well as they would their own, known as the Berne Convention, Judge Shelly Dick embraced Vetter’s argument that he was now the owner of a single, worldwide copyright. That ruling, not Coogler’s deal, is what’s giving the industry agita. The case is on appeal at the 5th Circuit, and the Motion Picture Association has filed a forceful amicus brief, warning that Judge Dick’s ruling will unleash global chaos. Authored by attorneys at O’Melveny, including the ubiquitous Dan Petrocelli—who’s also been battling foreign reversion claims in the Superman rights saga—the April 29 brief objects to the “one copyright” theory, arguing that the ruling undermines settled principles of territoriality, and threatens to upend international licensing deals. “Worse yet,” the MPA warns, “the decision would put U.S. law on a collision course with foreign courts and foreign law,” conjuring scenarios in which overseas exhibitors are left guessing about infringement liability. I think the entertainment industry is right to be sounding the alarm on this one, and not just because studios are staring down the possibility of losing global rights to some of their most valuable properties after 35 years. If territorial boundaries collapse, there’s no guarantee that American copyright law would become the default. Today, it’s an American author looking to claw back foreign rights. But tomorrow, the heirs of a Canadian author could insist that U.S. courts recognize that Canadian law allows for reversion after just 25 years. Here’s the full brief, and for good measure, a separate amicus brief from the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Music Publishers’ Association.

Thanks, Eriq, I’ll be back on Thursday night. Matt

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