Former “The View” senior producer Jennifer Shepard-Brookman sued Rosie O’Donnell on Thursday, calling the former co-host a “bully” who created a threatening environment that made the producer fear for her safety.
“My client started crying,” Shepard-Brookman’s attorney Brian Kennedy said in court documents about a September 2014 incident in which O’Donnell allegedly went off on his client for shifting coverage of beheaded journalist James Foley over to co-host Whoopi Goldberg.
Shepard-Brookman was “scared of Rosie and thought she was going to be assaulted,” Kennedy wrote in court documents, adding that O’Donnell got right into Shepard-Bookman’s face, causing her to fear she’d be assaulted.
As TheWrap previously reported, O’Donnell’s daughter Chelsea claimed the reason her mom split from the ABC talk show for a second time was due to her feud with Goldberg.
In her suit, Shepard-Brookman claimed O’Donnell got her fired out of spite.
O’Donnell’s attorney Nicolle Jacoby called the allegations “baseless.”
The lawsuit comes at an already rocky time for O’Donnell, who’s reportedly reeling after her daughter, Chelsea O’Donnell, fired off scathing comments about the comedian in an interview with the press.
In that interview, Chelsea claimed her mother’s public persona was a facade.
“She has this public persona; she will put this big smile on her face and try to be funny . . . whereas when we were home . . . she would either just be in her room, not engaging with us, or watching documentaries,” Chelsea said.