By CLAIRE SAVAGE and JAMES POLLARD || AP NEWS
A former Beast Industries employee is suing MrBeast’s media production company after she was allegedly fired from her social media manager job upon returning from maternity leave and following years of what she described as sexual harassment and workplace gender bias.
The lawsuit, filed by Lorrayne Mavromatis in federal court in North Carolina on Wednesday, accuses MrBeastYouTube, LLC and GameChanger 24/7, LLC of violating federal law that entitles eligible employees to take unpaid, job-protected leave for qualifying family and medical reasons, including childbirth. Mavromatis also filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging discrimination on the basis of sex, pregnancy, and retaliation.
Mavromatis claims that she worked “nonstop” following her baby’s birth as well as while in the delivery room. “I was still bleeding, and I just had to show up,” Mavromatis told The Associated Press in an interview.
Less than three weeks after she returned to work full time, she said she was fired.
A Beast Industries spokesperson called the lawsuit a “clout-chasing complaint” built on “deliberate misrepresentations and categorically false statements” in an emailed statement. Mavromatis’s position was eliminated, according to the spokesperson, when the new head of ecommerce reorganized her team.
The company shared a March 31, 2025 exchange on the workplace messaging app Slack, in which a coworker told Mavromatis that she “shouldn’t even be checking” her messages after Mavromatis canceled a meeting because she wrote she was “actually in labor at the hospital as we speak.” In response to allegations that MrBeast failed to inform her of her rights under the Family and Medical Leave Act, the company shared a screenshot of her signature confirming receipt of the employee handbook including FMLA policies.
“We will not submit to opportunistic lawyers looking to manufacture a payday from us,” the statement said.
Company culture once again under scrutiny
Mavromatis’s lawsuit raises disturbing allegations about the culture behind YouTube’s most popular creator as new company leaders seek to rapidly expand the media empire founded by Jimmy Donaldson under his MrBeast alias.
It portrays a toxic, misogynistic workplace that Beast Industries has recently tried to clean up as Donaldson’s media empire launches ambitious ventures into television and financial services. His “Beast Games” Amazon Prime reality competition show is two seasons deep and the company recently acquired the teenager-focused banking app Step.
Questions about Beast Industries’ internal culture surfaced two years ago after a social media firestorm over Donaldson’s past racist and homophobic language coincided with accusations that a longtime collaborator shared inappropriate sexual messages with minors. In an August 2024 email to employees, Donaldson said he recognized that he must “create a culture that makes all our employees feel safe and allows them to do their best work.”
Beast Industries fired several employees following a third-party investigation that identified “isolated instances” of workplace harassment and misconduct.
Donaldson has since become a growing presence in American entertainment outside of YouTube. He appeared at last year’s MTV Video Music Awards, advertised for business software maker Salesforce in a Super Bowl commercial and joined the cast of the upcoming “Angry Birds Movie 3.”
Beast Industries, which employed about 450 people last year, continues to expand. The company has been on a hiring spree of late, landing executives from the likes of NBCUniversal and TikTok as the brand tries to find success beyond Donaldson’s name and image.
Mavromatis’s lawsuit was filed ahead of Thursday’s TIME100 celebration in New York City, where Donaldson is scheduled to be honored as one of the magazine’s most influential people, along with Pope Leo XIV, President Donald Trump and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
A high intensity workplace
Beast Industries encouraged employees to “go to great lengths” to get the job done, according to Mavromatis’s lawsuit, which refers to a 36-page “HOW TO SUCCEED IN MRBEAST PRODUCTION” guide circulated among employees at the time of her employment. The guide included sections saying, “It’s okay for the boys to be childish” and “The Amount of hours you work is irrelevant.”
It was against that backdrop that Mavromatis said she joined a team meeting from her hospital bed in the throes of labor, afraid she would be fired if she refused.
“I actually had to hold my breath in between talks because of how hard the contractions were,” she said.
Mavromatis, now 34, was hired in August 2022 as MrBeast’s head of Instagram, and was promoted twice within a year. Between June 2023 and January 2024, she oversaw operations for the company’s verticals division, an executive-level position.
A few months after she started at the company, she asked James Warren — Donaldson’s cousin and CEO at that time— for advice when she noticed Donaldson would not make eye-contact with her.
According to the complaint, Warren responded: “Jimmy gets really awkward around beautiful women. Let’s just say that when you’re around and he goes to the restroom, he’s not actually using the restroom.”
The company attributed Donaldson’s bathroom trips to his Crohn’s disease.
The lawsuit said that after Mavromatis reported sexual harassment issues as well as a hostile work environment to human resources, which was headed by Donaldson’s mother, she was transferred and demoted to “an obscure role.” The company refuted that claim, calling it “false and inaccurate.”
TIME’S UP Legal Defense Fund at the National Women’s Law Center, which was founded during the early days of the #MeToo reckoning against sexual misconduct, says it is supporting Mavromatis’s case.
“Abusive workplaces rely on a persistent lack of accountability. We see this pattern frequently, where those with influence and power are allowed to harm others and retaliate against those who decide to speak up,” said senior director Jennifer Mondino. “We are in a collective fight to address a longstanding culture of harassment that relies on entrenched silence and shame.”
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The Associated Press’ women in the workforce coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
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Source: mrbeast-sexual-harassment-pregnant-maternity-leave-lorrayne-mavromatis
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