Benny Safdie addresses sexual misconduct allegations against Sebastian Bear-McClard
Benny Safdie has addressed the sexual misconduct allegations against his former producing partner Sebastian Bear-McClard.
Sebastian, who produced Josh and Benny Safdie's movies Good Time and Uncut Gems, was accused of sexual misconduct and grooming teenage girls in March this year. At the time, a spokesperson for the brothers insisted they fired Sebastian from their Elara Pictures company after learning of his behaviour in July 2022.
While speaking to GQ for an interview published on Tuesday, the Uncut Gems co-director responded to the allegations levelled against his Elara Pictures co-founder.
"It's disgusting, and when you find out something about somebody that you didn't realise, you just have to be much more careful," Benny told the outlet. "It's a lot, and it's not something that you want to have happen to anybody. And when you find it out, the one thing that you can do is really just take control."
In the original article in March, it was reported that the Safdie brothers were involved in private mediation with their former producer, who will not be involved in Elara Pictures' next project.
Josh and Benny found fame directing movies together, but Benny has since become an actor for hire in films such as Oppenheimer and Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.
In the GQ interview, Benny confirmed that Elara Pictures is still intact, despite Josh directing the next movie on his own.
"It just felt like, OK, there's things that I want to explore that don’t necessarily align right now with Josh," he explained. "So it's a divide and conquer mentality. He wants to tell this story, he can go and do that. I'm going to go and do a couple of other things. It seems like a natural progression for how things have happened."
