NeNe Leakes is determined to win her lawsuit against Bravo, who she is accusing of stirring a hostile and racist work environment, having hired attorney David deRubertis, who famously represented Mo’Nique when she sued Netflix for unequal pay. In NeNe’s suit, she holds Bravo and executive producer Andy Cohen liable for fueling an unstable and rickety workplace, particularly for women of color, as she asserts to have been discriminated against by the network for years.
NBC Universal, True Entertainment and Truly Original and three other producers are also mentioned in the 74-page complaint, where she claims that all of the aforementioned companies accepted and tolerated a racist work environment. Judge Thomas W. Trash approved David’s inclusion in NeNe’s legal team, with her representative in the case being Georgia lawyer Joseph S. Habachy, court.
In 2019, David was hired to help Mo’Nique take on Netflix after the 54-year-old was left unhappy with the $500,000 she was offered for a one-hour comedy special while her fellow comedians were generating tens of millions for their shows on the streaming giant, such as Amy Schumer, who pocketed a reported $11 million and Dave Chapelle earned $20 million. Bringing David on board to fight NeNe’s case could make the latter have all the more chances of arguing a legitimate case if the suit goes to trial. During a recent interview with TMZ earlier this week, the reality star further alleged that she was called a “white woman” for wearing blonde hair during the taping of Real Housewives of Atlanta.
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“The goals are to stop racial discrimination against Black women,” she contended. “Nobody wants to go to work every day as a Black woman with blonde hair, and the head of the corporation calls you a white woman. I was constantly being retaliated against, being blacklisted, not able to work, being silenced, and so, you know, it was difficult to do.”
NeNe also dispelled rumors that the only reason she was filing the lawsuit was that she was angry that Bravo nor Andy ever presented her with a spin-off series while the likes of her former cast members, Porsha Williams and Kandi Burruss, have fronted stand-alone programs on the network. The mother-of-one was adamant that filing her legal case was unrelated to how she may have felt about not being offered a show of her own; she wanted justice for how she was said to have been treated while working on Real Housewives for as long as she had.
“It has nothing to do with having a temper tantrum and wanting a show,” she continued to say. “I never wanted my own show. I had many opportunities to have my own show.” After being ousted from the Bravo franchise, NeNe says her career had experienced a domino effect, which has prevented her from earning as much as she used to because she’s been blackballed in the entertainment industry by TV executives for her allegations.