A former cameraman for Megan Thee Stallion alleges he was trapped inside a moving vehicle with the star while she had sex with a woman.
The new lawsuit alleges a hostile work environment and harassment.
Emilio Garcia stated in the suit that was filed Tuesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court that after the alleged incident he was warned, “don’t ever discuss what you saw,” and berated, fat-shamed and treated differently by Megan.
The “harassment was so severe or pervasive” that it created a “hostile, abusive work environment” that made Garcia’s “working conditions intolerable,” the suit said.
Garcia began working for Megan Thee Stallion, known as Megan Pete, as a personal cameraman back in 2018. The cameraman quit his job back in 2019 to pursue the career with the Grammy winner full time and worked for her until June 2023.
The lawsuit states that he traveled with Megan to Ibiza, Spain in June 2022. While the group was in an SUV with three other woman after a night out, Megan and one of the women began to have sex next to him in the moving vehicle.
“I felt uncomfortable. I was kind of frozen, and I was shocked. At kind of just be the overall audacity to do this right, right beside me,” Garcia told NBC News in an interview.
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Shortly after, the rapper inquired to Garcia if he was in the car the night before. Once confirming he was also there, Megan told him: “Don’t ever discuss what you saw,” the suit states.
Garcia also stated in his suit that during the same trip, Megan insulted the camerman calling him a “fat bitch” and telling him to “spit your food out” and “you don’t need to be eating.”
“To hear someone who advocates about loving your body tell me these things,” Garcia said in the interview, “I felt degraded.”
When the group returned from the trip, his compensation had changed from a monthly flat rate to a pay-per-task system that required invoices submitted per each assignment.
The cameraman stated he was expected to perform the same level of tasks but was treated differently following the trip. In addition, he saw a decrease in bookings Megan hired him to do.
Gracia considered quitting around the same time due to Megan’s “possessiveness combined with a lack of appropriate pay for the amount of time asked of him” and a lack of bookings, the suit states.
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Garcia remained on the schedule for a job in June 2023, but the night before Roc Nation notified him that “his services would no longer be required” by Megan, according to the lawsuit.
While working for Megan, Garcia “endured a barrage of relentless sexual and fat-shaming comments plunging him into profound emotional distress,” the suit said.
“What I learned throughout the years is that, especially coming from an from an office environment, is you know, there’s no HR department in the entertainment business,” Garcia told NBC News in an interview. “So if you don’t know that you’re being done wrong, you don’t really know how to advocate for yourself until you start asking maybe you start asking your peers who have representation, they have agents, they have management, they have attorney. So I just really just want to encourage people to advocate for themselves.”
The alleged behavior caused Garcia to face a loss in earnings and other employment benefits, as well as physical injuries, physical sickness and emotional distress, according to the lawsuit.
“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,” Ron Zambrano, an attorney for Garcia, said in a statement to NBC News. “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.”
The lawsuit alleges that Megan prohibited him from working for anyone else and was denied overtime pay and breaks.
His misclassification as an independent contractor “left him without basic insurance coverage, depriving him of essential health care,” the suit said.
Garcia is seeking more than six figures. The suit seeks unpaid wages, as well as interest on the unpaid wages, unpaid overtime wages and other employee benefits at the legal rate.
