Disney & 20th TV EVP Nissa Diederich Swatted With Retaliation Lawsuit From Ex-Exec Jim Sharp’s Stuntman Son

21.12.2022 - 03:31 / deadline.com

The stuntman son of the man who Nissa Diederich took over from at 20th Television last year is suing the EVP and the Walt Disney Company for retaliation and putting him on a career killing blacklist.

“Effective April 1, 2022, Ms. Diederich now had the power and authority to remove Jimmy from the pre-approved Stunt Coordinator List and she abused her position of power to make sure Jimmy would not work again as a Stunt Coordinator,” asserts a multi-claim complaint field in LA Superior Court yesterday. “Ms. Diederich did not have a good faith basis for directly and indirectly terminating Jimmy’s employment,” the document from former Modern Family and American Horror Story stunt coordinator Jimmy Sharp and his El Segundo-based Barrera & Associates lawyers adds (read it here).

Sparing neither allegations nor anecdote, and mostly sidestepping the parental relationship, the 15-page complaint seeks a plethora of damages and “injunctive and declaratory relief of no less than $1 million.

Now, in case that April date from this year rings a bell in the old memory department it is because that is exactly one day after the plaintiff’s father and industry vet Jim Sharp Sr exited his gig as 20th TV head of production, EVP and long anointed Diederich officially took over the position.

In that context, there had apparently been long festering animosity between Sharp Jr and Diederich over a 2017 probe into “alleged billing irregularities and alleged favoratism (sic) in the workplace toward Jimmy as a result of his father being the head of Television Production,” as the filing succinctly says. Investigated by HR, as the then Bob Iger-run Disney moved to vacuum up the bulk of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox assets for $71.3 billion, the complaint