CBS, one of the four major television networks in the United States, and Paramount Global, the corporation to which it belongs, have been sued. Screenwriter Brian Beneker, who has worked for the SEAL Team series since 2017, believes that he was discriminated against for a job because he was male, white and heterosexual.
The lawsuit, as reported by Deadline, argues that “Mr. Beneker was not hired or promoted due to his race, sex and heterosexuality” and that he was a victim of positive discrimination that favors the hiring of women, non-white people or those who are LGBT. , which he considers an “illegal policy.”
Beneker is no stranger to Hollywood. He got his first job as a screenwriter on the series Resurrection Boulevard in 2000. Starting in 2008, he chained one project after another as a script coordinator: from the biker drama Sons of Anarchy to the legal series The defenders, to go to Vegas and finally to Seal Team, where he has been for seven seasons.
The problem is that Beneker, instead of being coordinator of the season scripts, has always wanted to be part of the writers’ room in a stable job. SEAL Team supposedly has writing talent: he has written three episodes as a freelancer. When he asked to join the writers’ room as one of them, the response from the then showrunner, John Glenn, was that “there were too many writers” and that CBS couldn’t hire more.
In 2019, however, he asked new showrunner Spencer Hudnet why Glenn had ended up hiring another writer when there were supposedly no chairs in the writers’ room. “Hudnut indicated it was because he was black,” he states in the lawsuit regarding the candidate they chose. Beneker had to settle for continuing as script coordinator and signing an episode from time to time.
This version of events, let it be known, is the one presented by Beneker in his lawsuit. He has legal advice from America First Legal Foundation, a non-profit organization run by Donald Trump collaborator Stephen Miller, which aims to repeal affirmative action policies that, in his opinion, cause a direct violation of civil rights. and equal opportunities for citizens.
The lawsuit, in fact, is interpreted by the specialized media as a spearhead of Trump’s agenda, which everything indicates that he will run again for the presidency of the United States, which wants to shake one of the most progressive speakers. of the country: Hollywood.
