Female Disney Exec: I Didn’t Realize Part Of My Job Description Was “Being Groped By John Lasseter”
John Lasseter took a sabbatical last week over actions that he described as “missteps,” but those words grossly understated his actions.
A new report published this morning in Deadline offers new details of Lasseter’s “missteps.”
Here’s a rundown of the new allegations by former Disney and Pixar executives:
- Lasseter was not allowed to attend film wrap parties without handlers to prevent him from behaving inappropriately toward women.
- Lasseter had an “obsession” with the young actresses who portrayed the Disney Fairies (the product line inspired by Tinkerbell), and he insisted that the actresses be flown to New York for an event. A former Pixar executive was assigned to be an escort when Lasseter took the actresses to drink and party. The exec observed that Lasseter would hug the fairies for extended periods of time and make other kinds of physical contact. “He was inappropriate with the fairies,” the person told Deadline. “We had to have someone make sure he wasn’t alone with them.”
- On another trip to New York for Toy Fair, Lasseter physically harassed a female executive in Disney’s consumer products division, and one person “saw Lasseter pull the female executive tightly to him and move his hands over her body.” The woman tried to laugh off the situation, telling her colleagues that she didn’t realize part of her job description was “being groped by John Lasseter.”
- A former female executive told Deadline: “He’s very tactile in a weird way. He would rub my leg in a meeting … It was creepy and weird. It got to the point where I wouldn’t sit next to him in a meeting, because it undermined everything I said.”
(Photo: Shutterstock.com)
