John Lowe
John Lowe
Urman is taken into account a central determine within the criticism alongside her lieutenants, Renna and Lieber.
Within the lawsuit, Lowe particulars a sequence of sexual feedback directed at him that have been additionally supposed to be racist. He was instructed shortly after he began that his shoe dimension and race meant he was “well-endowed down there,” considered one of a number of alleged feedback about his intercourse life that included a query about “how he dealt with a person’s genitals,” in accordance with the criticism.
The lawsuit alleges an incident wherein Urman introduced his canine into the writers’ room, stating that his youngsters now not needed it. She pressured Lowe to maintain it for practically a yr, in accordance with the criticism. The writer claims that the request was “racially motivated harassment and an train of surveillance energy supposed to impose a burden on him.”
“She mentioned ‘so long as you might have this canine, you may all the time have a spot right here,'” Lowe says.
The racist feedback allegedly reached the casting, in accordance with the criticism. On one event, Renna reportedly mentioned that Eme Ikwuakor, a black recurring actor, “barely is aware of find out how to learn.” In one other incident, she allegedly referred to as Lowe late at night time and instructed him she was in mattress sporting solely her underwear, in accordance with the lawsuit.
The state of affairs got here to a boiling level in June 2025 when Lowe requested Urman if the writers’ room would observe Juneteenth. She responded by calling the day “the seventeenth,” in accordance with the lawsuit.
“I had prayed for this second — to be on a Paramount film set,” says Lowe, who provides that he spent the following work week crying in empty soundstages. “She mentioned it on goal to let me know that she owns me to some extent.”
Shortly after, Lowe was positioned on hiatus. He says he was fired in July, lower than two weeks after elevating considerations about how the writers’ room was being run. The lawsuit alleges his firing was retaliatory.
“There isn’t a excuse for this blatant racism and harassment,” Ron Zambrano, Lowe’s lawyer, mentioned in an announcement. “CBS must be ashamed of itself for permitting this, and the Matlock the showrunner and producers must be held accountable.
Matlock was a smash hit for CBS, averaging 16 million cross-platform viewers over 35 days in its first season. The sequence, a meta replace of the ’80s and ’90s present starring Andy Griffith, stars Kathy Bates as a lawyer who restarts her profession at a New York agency, Leah Lewis, Skye P. Marshall and Jason Ritter.
The submitting of the lawsuit comes after Matlock Actor David Del Rio was abruptly fired from the manufacturing for sexual assault in an incident involving him and an unnamed feminine forged member.
Earlier this yr, Del Rio initiated arbitration in opposition to CBS Studios. He alleged that proof contradicting the allegations in opposition to him was not totally thought of earlier than his dismissal.