Freelance writer and script coordinator Brian Beneker is suing CBS and its parent company Paramount for not promoting him during his tenure on the show Seal Team, citing network diversity quotas as the reason he was never hired to staff writer. Now, a former colleague is publicly calling B.S. on his claim.
Writer Jorge A. Reyes, whose most recent credit is the USA drama Queen of the South, says that he worked with Beneker on the early 2000s show Resurrection Blvd when he was a writer and Benenker was a script coordinator. According to Reyes, Beneker likely wasn’t hired to a staff writer position because of his personality and quality of work.
“I worked with this guy in 2000–I was a writer, he was a script coordinator and a seriously odd duck THEN,” Reyes tweeted. “He thinks never gotten a staff writer job in 24 years because he’s white??”
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“It’s because he’s weird and the work’s not good.”
Beneker filed a discrimination suit against the network this week, alleging that showrunner Spencer Hudnut told him that he wasn’t hired into a staff writer job “because he was a heterosexual, white male,” according to the filing obtained by The Daily Beast.
“Hudnut indicated the reason Beneker could not be brought on as a staff writer was that he did not check any diversity boxes, thus confirming that the Defendants deliberately discriminated against Beneker on the basis of his race, sex, gender, and sexual orientation,” the complaint goes on to say.
Reyes suggested that this doesn’t sound likely. “This dude's first credit—a co-written by (the showrunner rewarded four support staffers with a half a script)--had to be page 1 rewritten,” Reyes said in another tweet, “and was given to [Beneker] ON A SHOW ABOUT LATINO BOXERS BY THE LATINO SHOWRUNNER.”
Reyes also expressed his feeling that Beneker’s suit is a symptom of a larger problem: diverse writers being used as scapegoats when white male writers aren’t given an opportunity.
“Managers/agents/showrunners need to STOP telling writers they didn't [get] hired because they weren't diverse,” Reyes concluded, “They need to tell them the real reason: you were mediocre and they didn't like you.”
Beneker is being represented by America First Legal Foundation, which was founded by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller and aims to “oppose the radical left’s anti-jobs, anti-freedom, anti-faith, anti-borders, anti-police, and anti-American crusade,” according to its website.
The Daily Beast reached out to Reyes, Beneker and Beneker’s representatives for comment and has not received a response.
