Megan Thee Stallion’s former personal cameraman has sued the rapper for workplace harassment, saying he was forced to ride in a car where she was having sex in a foreign country and subject to constant fat-shaming.
Emilio Garcia filed the complaint in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Tuesday, seeking unspecified damages and a jury trial.
A lawyer for the rapper (real name Megan Pete) issued the following statement to TheWrap: “This is an employment claim for money — with no sexual harassment claim filed and with salacious accusations to attempt to embarrass her. We will deal with this in court.”
In turn, Garcia’s lawyer responded on Wednesday, “Unfortunately, it is not a surprise that the defendant, through her attorney, is denying the allegations. It is an utter lie that we have not alleged a hostile work environment based on the sex claim. It is literally the first claim listed in the lawsuit. None of this is intended to embarrass her but merely an attempt to hold her accountable for her illegal actions just as anyone else should be, celebrity or not.”
“The reaction that my client should not have been offended or somehow thankful for being in a car while she had sex with another woman is an absolute double standard. If our client was a woman and was forced to watch a man have sex in the vehicle with her, there would be no outrage if she was offended,” the statement continued. “Employees who work for celebrities should be afforded the same sort of workplace free of harassment that any other worker in any other industry is legally obligated to have. We have to stop expecting that those who work for stars should just deal with this egregious and illegal behavior and suck it up and be thankful for their access. That is a recipe for the abuse in treatment and underpayment, not only in this lawsuit, but in many other stories that are yet to be told.”
Tuesday’s paperwork details an alleged situation in June 2022 when Garcia was on tour with the rapper in Ibiza, Spain. Garcia says the rapper started having sex with one of three women in their SUV transport home after a night out right beside him.
Garcia “could not get out of the car as it was both moving and he was in the middle of nowhere in a foreign country,” the lawsuit states, causing him to be “embarrassed, mortified and offended throughout the whole ordeal.”
He says Pete asked him the next day if he was in the SUV, which he confirmed. She then told him “Don’t ever discuss what you saw.”
The document also describes how the rapper “berated and directed her fat-shaming comments towards [Garcia] such as ‘Fat Bitch,’ ‘Spit your food out,’ and that ‘You don’t need to be eating.’”
Garcia also confided in a makeup artist as he was thinking of quitting his job because of Pete’s “possessiveness combined with lack of appropriate pay for the amount of time asked of him.”
The complaint details the rapper drunkenly FaceTiming Garcia to discuss his pay, saying they reached an “understanding” and Garcia was still scheduled for a gig that the rapper had coming up the following Friday. That’s when ROC NATION “unexpectedly reached out” to Gargia the night before and told him that the artist no longer needed his services.
Garcia began his employment with Stallion in July 2018 as her personal cameraman, and he says was misclassified as an independent contractor under California law from the beginning.
“Megan just needs to pay our client what he’s due, own up to her behavior and quit this sort of sexual harassment and fat-shaming conduct,” Garcia’s attorney Ron Zambrano, a partner and Employment Litigation Chair at West Coast Employment Lawyers, said in a press release. “Emilio should never have been put in a position of having to be in the vehicle with her while she had sex with another woman. ‘Inappropriate’ is putting it lightly. Exposing this behavior to employees is definitely illegal.”
Pamela Chelin contributed to this report.
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