GREENVILLE, North Carolina – A former executive at Beast Industries sued the social media production company founded by YouTube star MrBeast on April 22, accusing company leaders of sexual harassment and pregnancy discrimination.
In the federal lawsuit, which was filed in the Eastern District Court of North Carolina, Ms Lorrayne Mavromatis, who was hired in 2022 as head of the company’s Instagram team, said the company had fostered a widespread culture of demeaning female employees that extended to its figurehead, MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson.
The suit names MrBeast’s production companies as defendants.
Ms Mavromatis says in the suit that the company’s former chief executive officer James Warren, who is Donaldson’s cousin, made inappropriate comments about her appearance and tried to arrange meetings alone with her at his home.
The suit said that Mr Warren also told her that Mr Donaldson refused to work directly with her because “her appearance had a certain sexual effect” on him.
She said that Mr Warren also dismissed her complaints about a “male client’s unwelcome advances toward her”, telling her she should be flattered by the attention.
A person who answered a call to a number listed for Mr Warren hung up when reached for comment April 22 and did not respond to further calls or a text.
Beast Industries, which is based in Greenville, North Carolina, and has over 700 employees, denies the claims, Ms Gaude Paez, a representative for the company, said in an e-mail.
The lawsuit is “built on deliberate misinterpretations and categorically false statements,” Ms Paez said, adding that the company had “extensive evidence” to rebut the claims.
The lawsuit also mentioned an internal handbook that Ms Mavromatis said instructed staff to do “everything you can to empower the boys when filming” and said that “no does not mean no”.
Ms Paez said in an e-mail that the company’s employee handbook did not contain the language the lawsuit quoted.
But Ms Paez added that the company had a “production handbook that is used to guide the creative approach”, but that she had not seen that document.
(The New York Times obtained a document titled “How To Succeed in MrBeast Production”, which contained the lines referred to in Ms Mavromatis’ lawsuit.)
In an interview with the Times, Ms Mavromatis said that, at first, it seemed like a dream job.
“It felt surreal to get the opportunity to work there,” she said. “But it didn’t really take long for me to see that things were not exactly how I saw them from the outside,” she said.
Ms Mavromatis said in the lawsuit that other male employees would tell women to “shut up” in meetings or laugh at and mock contestants on MrBeast’s show “Beast Games” when they complained about not having access to period products.
Ms Mavromatis said that when she complained about the incidents and work environment to human resources in 2023, she was demoted to a smaller role as social media manager in the company’s merchandise department.
In early 2025, when Ms Mavromatis became pregnant, she said in the suit, the company did not inform her about its maternity leave policy.
When she was in the labour and delivery room of a hospital, she said that she felt she had no choice but to join a work conference call out of fear of retaliation.
She said she also felt pressured to work during her maternity leave.
Three weeks after Ms Mavromatis returned from leave, she was terminated from her role despite having a strong performance track record that included being promoted twice during her first year of employment, the suit said.
“There was no expectation that she work while she was in labour or maternity leave at all,” Ms Paez told the Times.
“Work had to come first, before my daughter, because I was in such fear of losing my job,” Ms Mavromatis said over Zoom. “Those moments I will never get back. I’ll never be able to see her first laugh, her first giggle. I wasn’t present for those.”
She said the job had negatively affected her mental health and she had since been treated for depression.
Mr Donaldson, 27, started posting on YouTube as a teenager and eventually found fame for his brand of provocative philanthropy.
He has 479 million followers on the platform and is known for giving away piles of cash and extravagant prizes – like cars or a private island – but often with a catch or a challenge involved.
For example, he paid a man US$10,000 (S$12,800) for every day he could stay in a grocery store.
In his most popular video, contestants competed for US$456,000 in a “real life” riff on the dark Netflix survival drama Squid Game.
When Mr Donaldson and Amazon MGM Studios teamed up to create a new game show with a US$5 million prize, thousands of people jumped at the chance to take part.
Over a dozen people who participated in the first instalment of Beast Games told the Times that they had not received adequate food or medical care and that contestants had been physically injured during challenges.
A spokesperson for MrBeast said at the time that the shoot “was unfortunately complicated by the CrowdStrike incident, extreme weather and other unexpected logistical and communications issues”.
The spokesperson said MrBeast had started a formal review and had “taken steps to ensure that we learn from this experience”.
Later, a group of contestants filed a lawsuit against Mr Donaldson and the show’s production companies, citing “dangerous circumstances and conditions”.
A third season of Beast Games is currently in development. NYTIMES
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