Catt Sadler Criticizes E! for Axing Producer

Former E! sponsor Catt Sadler has condemned the discharge of a producer who allowed criticism of this cable station to air during its Golden Globes red-carpet coverage.


"It's disappointing that any media would dictate the censorship of opinions," Sadler told Variety Saturday. "But it's especially upsetting in this case since we're at a cultural tipping point where girls feel more satisfied being vocal about problems like pay equality and sexual wrongdoing. To close down those conversations would be to stifle progress."


Sadler's remarks came one day after Aileen Gram-Moreno registered a complaint against E! together with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the first step toward a lawsuit against the cable station. Gram-Moreno claimed that she had been fired for letting a pre-recorded interview to make it into the feed of carpet telecast. From the interview with E! anchor Ryan Seacrest, Longoria criticized E!'s treatment of Sadler, who abandoned the cable channel after learning that she left significantly lower wages than her male counterpart Jason Kennedy.


E! has stated that Gram-Moreno, a producer who worked for 12 years on E!'s trademark red-carpet telecasts, was let go for a long-term bad performance. Gram-Moreno's attorney told Variety Friday that E! "never raised a performance issue" with Gram-Moreno throughout her time at the cable channel.


Gram-Moreno explained that after celebrity Debra Messing criticized the system's treatment of Sadler in an earlier interview, the producer was told to screen all prerecorded interviews for reference of the former host. However, Gram-Moreno maintained, the number of prerecorded interviews was greater than normal, as producers worried that Sadler's name would remain to surface. The dimensions of workload made it impossible to screen all of the interviews.

Gram-Moreno's criticism comes as Seacrest, the direct red-carpet anchor for E!, faces sexual harassment allegations first detailed in a report Monday from Variety. E! has said Seacrest would anchor Sunday's Academy Awards telecast that is red-carpet. Publicists reached by Variety this week indicated that their clients would not talk with Seacrest on Saturday. Others, however, said that they wouldn't be afraid to allow their clients to be interviewed by the host, citing an E! analysis that found "insufficient evidence" of wrongdoing on Seacrest's part.