‘Real Housewives of Atlanta’ Production Company Owes Crew $411,000 In Back Pay
Pay up! Bravo’s reality series, The Real Housewives of Atlanta, has been ordered by a New York judge to pay $411,000 in back pay to cover their production bills. Reportedly crew members numbering in the “hundreds” haven’t gotten their coin.
True Entertainment, the production company behind the Bravo show, reached a settlement for restitution owed due to failure to pay overtime when employees worked 50-72 hours, according to court records. Additionally, True Entertainment was accused of “purposefully” not keeping track of staff hours. The money will be paid to productions assistants, associate producers, and other crew members.
True Entertainment released the following statement:
“True Entertainer has been a top creator of TV programming for nearly 17 years, and for every one of those years has compensated its employees fairly and competitively, with many of the employees having worked at True for more than a decade.”
“In fact, True Entertainment employees receive fair and competitive compensation, and benefits including, for example, health insurance and paid time off. In this case, the company classified a small number of people as creative employees, exempt from overtime compensation, under applicable federal and state laws.”
“The New York State Attorney General did not agree; thus, we reached an amicable settlement of the issue with the Attorney General. We greatly value our employees at True Entertainment, and look forward to continuing to focus on creating and producing high quality programming for our network partners.”
Tell us what you think? Was this a misunderstanding or was True Entertainment producing creative company job titles on purpose?
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I am so lucky to combine blogging with my guilty pleasure of watching reality TV. I read all the comments and respond to most. Feel free to reach out to me. If you like fiction, I have two published novels: Three Days in Purgatory and A Reason to Run.