A former WWE writer has sued the company for wrongful termination, alleging she was fired after she voiced objection to “offensively racist and stereotypical jargon” in scripts for scenes on SmackDown.
Britney Abrahams filed a lawsuit Tuesday in federal court in New York naming WWE, Vince McMahon and other executives as defendants. Abrahams was hired as a writer on SmackDown on a temporary basis in November 2020 and brought on full time in May ’21. She was fired in April ’22. The suit claims that after Abrahams “made her complaints of discrimination, she was targeted for a pretextual termination by WWE’s executive management team and her direct supervisors.”
According to the suit, Abrahams, who is Black, repeatedly objected to racially insensitive material in SmackDown scripts. In one instance, WWE senior writer Chris Dunn wrote a scene for Bianca Belair, who is Black, in which she was scripted to say, “Uh-uh! Don’t make me take off my earrings and beat your ass!” Abrahams then wrote an email to SmackDown head writer Ryan Callahan saying the scene written by Dunn included “racial jargon and offensive stereotypes.” Dunn and Callahan are both named as defendants in the suit.
