An actor in California who appeared in a live-action Stranger Things experience, is suing Netflix and other defendants for failing to provide adequate COVID-19 work conditions.
Timothy Hearl, who played an alternate dimension Demogorgon monster on Stranger Things: The Drive Into Experience, is the first actor to sue entertainment employers over COVID-19 working conditions in the January 15 suit he filed in the Los Angeles Superior Court.
Netflix, Empyrean Production Services, Redrock Entertainment Services LLC, Fever Labs Inc. and Secret Group U.S. Inc are named as defendants in the case.
Hearl was required to wear a costume for the monster role, complaining to superiors in work emails about safety before he was reassigned to play a character who wore a hazmat suit. The lawsuit states that Hearl expressed concern about being exposed to COVID-19 while at the indoor rehearsals..
Hearl and other actors would learn that they had been replaced after complaining, with the company firing him for what they say was “making women uncomfortable.”
According to published reports, Hearl now fears that he’ll be blacklisted from the industry because of the allegations, the suit states. He had to out himself as a gay man, which prompted defendants to then change their reasoning for firing him to ‘due to client’s request,’ the lawsuit reads.The actor has suffered depression, pain, humiliation, severe emotional distress, trauma and sleeplessness. Hearl is seeking unspecified damages, according to the suit…
Here is a video of just what the drive in experience was like: