A former Jimmy Kimmel Live writer is accusing the late night show of having a dark, homophobic culture — not to mention, a host that allegedly pays men more than women.
Jack Allison, who used to be a writer on the ABC program, took to social media this week to air out his grievances with the show after learning that former presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg will be a guest host.
Allison said he felt the need to share that the staff had an alleged history of saying homophobic and anti-gay slurs “behind the scenes,” which is a big deal because Mayor Pete is an openly gay man.
Related: Former Homophobic Republican Congressman Comes Out As Gay!
He tweeted on Monday:
“For me it kinda feels like news if the gay presidential candidate hosts a show where the writers were saying “f****t” openly in the writers room until they hired a gay writer. In 2015”
Sickening. But not the least bit surprising.
Unfortunately, Allison had a lot more tea to spill about Jimmy Kimmel himself. In a separate tweet, he claimed the late night host “shamed” him for telling a woman co-worker about how he was given a raise that allegedly put him $1,000 a week ahead of her.
Kimmel allegedly wrote to Allison in an email:
“When I gave you a raise and a good deal of praise and asked you to keep it between us, you did the opposite. Not only did you violate my trust, you made others feel bad about themselves. We spoke about this–quite emotionally, as I recall–you regretted having done it and I put it behind us. Completely.”
That wasn’t all. Allison went on to claim that his former co-workers “ostracized” him after he took a day off because of a mental health crisis, tweeting:
“I had a mental breakdown at @JimmyKimmelLive and took one single day off for mental health. Then I was ostracized for nearly a year before I quit. Later, Jimmy told me on email that my bosses (including his wife) [pushed] me out because they didn’t believe me about my mental health.”
A second email allegedly showed Kimmel saying that while he believed Allison about his mental health issues, the staff “didn’t believe him.” The host allegedly wrote:
“I believed you 100% (and still do, btw) Many on the staff did not. Some in the ranks were angry with you for using a depression as an exaggerated excuse to save your job and for taking advantage of my nature.”
Here’s jimmy on record saying the staff of the show didn’t believe me about my mental health struggles because I had the audacity to stand with the writers and tried not to be embarrassed when I came in after a day of literally contemplating suicide pic.twitter.com/qa2cjMonzC
— anonymous account (@jackallisonLOL) March 9, 2020
Naturally, Twitter quickly became riled up over Allison’s claims. While many have called out Kimmel for what they took as manipulative wording in his alleged email to Allison, others have said it’s straight up illegal to retaliate against employees for sharing their salaries.
Kristin Chirico of BuzzFeed’s Ladylike wrote:
“Hey, so this is Jimmy Kimmel breaking federal law, just FYI.”
Kimmel has yet to address the drama.
What do U think about all this, Perezcious readers?
[Image via ABC]
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