MrBeast Offers A Weak Defense Of His Embattled Competition Show

Making television shows is hard. Hell, most filmed productions are hard, but we’ll focus on television shows. There are lots of moving parts. Various departments help make a show run, and they all usually answer to the showrunner, a producer who is in charge of ensuring the show is consistent across multiple episodes with different directors and writers, as well as managing all the different departments. Being a showrunner is high-stress, very important, and requires training on other shows to do correctly.

That training was a big part of the WGA strike last year. Writers were being given the chance to be on set less and less, significantly hurting their chances of learning how a show is run. That knowledge and training help them move up in their careers. If it’s not available, they will have a harder time getting bigger jobs and fewer showrunners will be trained to run their shows. Then, there are fewer new names running shows, and those who are new may be dangerously untrained and in over their heads, like a certain YouTube star.

MrBeast is someone I’ve mostly been able to avoid. The stills for his videos look more dystopian than most YA movies I’ve seen. His header images look like something out of Robocop (not a compliment). He has done a lot of charitable work, but, as Kayleigh wrote this year, that charity can feel exploitative as it is used to generate clicks for his channel. Still, philanthropy is at the forefront of his efforts, and now he’s moving over to the game show sphere.

The YouTube celebrity, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, has been producing a show for Amazon called Beast Games where the grand prize is $5 million. According to multiple reports and a class action lawsuit, it’s been a dangerous mess. There have been complaints of unsafe conditions, logistical issues, and sexual harassment. All of this has happened under Donaldson’s watch, who has complete control of the show. But he wants you to know that it’s not as bad as you think (or have heard).

MrBeast recently shared a teaser for the show (that looks like ass, and not just because it’s presented vertically *barf*). While responding to comments, MrBeast downplayed the accusations against his show but didn’t deny them outright. “We have tons of behind-the-scenes dropping when the show does, to show how blown out of proportion these claims were,” the entrepreneur claimed. “Just can’t release it now because it would spoil the games.”

My favorite thing about his deflection is that it could be true but it sounds like bulls***. He may not want to spoil the games! Regardless, if people were accusing me of mismanaging a show to the point that people were being sexually harassed, and I had proof that that wasn’t the case, I’d release the footage; show be damned. It’s more likely the footage doesn’t exonerate MrBeast, which is also likely why he doesn’t claim it does.

That’s my second favorite thing about all of this. He doesn’t outright deny the accusations. Saying things were “blown out of proportion” is a weird way to react when people claim they were subject to sexual harassment and unsafe working conditions. How can sexual harassment be blown out of proportion, Jimmy? I guess we’ll find out when he definitely releases the footage he claims he has (he’s never going to do that).