Megan Thee Stallion is facing a lawsuit from a disgruntled former employee who claims she created a hostile work environment. As NBC News reports, Emilio Garcia, who began working as the rapper's personal cameraman in 2018, filed the suit in Los Angeles County Superior Court yesterday (April 23), alleging that the artist born Megan Pete forced him to watch her have sex with a woman while trapped inside a moving vehicle in a foreign country.
UPDATE (5/30, 2:54 p.m. ET): In a new filing obtained by Rolling Stone, Pete's lawyers, Mari Henderson and Alex Spiro, said "there's no truth" to the "outlandish" and "fabricated" claims against the rapper.
"Plaintiff is a con artist who is manipulating the judicial system to act as his publicist and bullhorn in a desperate attempt to boost his failed singing career while trying to tear down the successful career of Megan Thee Stallion," Henderson and Spiro wrote in their formal answer to Garcia's complaint. "Throughout his tenure as an independently contracted photographer and videographer for Ms. Pete and her production companies…(Garcia) repeatedly falsified his invoices and overcharged Ms. Pete for services he never completed and sought reimbursements for money he never spent."
According to Henderson and Spiro, Garcia's "pattern of misrepresentations" resulted in Pete terminating his employment. "Angry at the loss of this high-profile gig and his exile from the inner circles of stardom, (Garcia) filed a factually and legally frivolous complaint," they wrote."
Garcia claims that Pete told him, "Don't ever discuss what you saw," regarding the incident, which allegedly occurred during her 2022 European tour, and was berated and fat-shamed as part of a "severe or pervasive" pattern of harassment that made his "working conditions intolerable." The rapper terminated his employment in June 2023.
It was after the alleged incident on the European tour when Garcia claims he was in a vehicle with Pete and three other women after a night out in Ibiza, Spain, that resulted in a change in his pay structure and treatment by the rapper, as well a decrease in bookings.
"I felt uncomfortable," Garcia told NBC News, reflecting on when he says Pete started having sex with one of the other women in the car. "I was kind of frozen, and I was shocked. At kind of just be the overall audacity to do this right, right beside me." During the same trip, she allegedly called Garcia a "fat bitch" and told him to spit out his food. "To hear someone who advocates about loving your body tell me these things, I felt degraded," Garcia said.
According to the lawsuit, the cameraman "endured a barrage of relentless sexual and fat-shaming comments plunging him into profound emotional distress" while working for Pete. The rapper's alleged behaviour caused Garcia to face a loss in earnings and other employment benefits, as well as physical injuries, physical sickness and emotional distress. He's seeking more than six figures in unpaid wages and other employee benefits.
Pete is denying the allegations. Her attorney, Alex Spiro, told Page Six, "This is an employment claim for money — with no sexual harassment claim filed and with salacious accusations to attempt to embarrass her. We will deal with this in court."