As reported by The Los Angeles Times, a former segment producer who worked on The Bachelor and The Bachelorette has filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros., NZX Productions, and five Bachelor producers, claiming she was sexually harassed while working on the set of the reality show. The producer filing the suit, Becky Steenhoek, says she was “repeatedly asked questions about her sex life” during the making of the 2016 season, with five different producers supposedly asking frequent graphic questions like “is your vagina shaved?” or “have you ever fondled testicles before?” among others.
Steenhoek says she was “raised in a Christian household” and so these questions made her uncomfortable, which allegedly made her coworkers want to push her further. “It was a fun time for them to see me get embarrassed,” she said, claiming that her colleagues continued to purposefully make her feel uncomfortable throughout the season. She eventually complained to one of the show’s other producers, but she was told that it was just “locker-room talk.” After that, she claims she was “excluded from production meetings” and was left to run “menial errands for her bosses.” Eventually, another producer told her she was being let go “because she was not being enough of a ‘bitch’.”
Steenhoek is suing for “damages related to sexual harassment and hostile work environment, sex discrimination, retaliation, failure to prevent harassment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and wrongful termination.” Part of Steenhoek’s frustration comes from the fact that she believed she was hired specifically because she’s “a good person” who could be “an emotional support system” for the show’s cast, but then it seemed like she was fired for that reason.