{"id":213006,"date":"2026-01-02T10:38:04","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T10:38:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/213006\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T10:38:04","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T10:38:04","slug":"will-smith-accused-of-sexual-harassment-in-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/213006\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Smith accused of sexual harassment in lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Will Smith has been accused of sexual harassment by Brian King Joseph in a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles just before the new year, according to documents obtained by Fox News Digital.<\/p>\n<p>Joseph, a professional violinist, alleges Smith was &#8220;deliberately grooming and priming him for further sexual exploitation&#8221; in the complaint against the Academy Award-winning actor and associates with his Treyball Studios Management, Inc.<\/p>\n<p>After his first performance with Smith in December 2024, the\u00a0&#8220;Gettin&#8217; Jiggy Wit It&#8221;\u00a0singer allegedly hired Joseph to join his &#8220;Based on a True Story: 2025 Tour.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Joseph claimed their &#8220;relationship grew even closer&#8221; after Smith offered him a chance to play on several tracks of the rapper&#8217;s upcoming album<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Smith and Joseph began spending additional time alone, with Smith even telling Plaintiff that \u2018You and I have such a special connection, that I don\u2019t have with anyone else,\u2019 and other similar expressions indicating his closeness to Plaintiff,&#8221; documents state.<\/p>\n<p>Joseph allegedly joined the first leg of the tour in March 2025 in\u00a0Las Vegas, where he was provided a hotel room booked by Smith and his team. <\/p>\n<p>He claimed &#8220;no other individuals besides \u2026 the crew and hotel staff would have had access&#8221; to his personal room.<\/p>\n<p>The violinist, who competed on\u00a0&#8220;America&#8217;s Got Talent&#8221;\u00a0in 2018, claimed to place his room key in his bag, which was left in a van responsible for transporting the cast and crew around. <\/p>\n<p>After a rehearsal at the venue, management allegedly spent hours retrieving the bag.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>When Joseph returned to his hotel room later that evening, he claimed to have &#8220;discovered evidence suggesting that an unknown person had unlawfully entered the room.&#8221; Joseph subsequently called hotel security.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The evidence included a handwritten note addressed to Plaintiff by name, which read \u2018Brian, I\u2019ll be back no later 5:30, just us (drawn heart), Stone F,\u2019&#8221; the lawsuit states.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Among the remaining belongings were wipes, a beer bottle, a red backpack, a bottle of HIV medication with another individual\u2019s name, an earring, and hospital discharge paperwork belonging to a person unbeknownst to Plaintiff.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Joseph feared that an unknown individual would return to his room to engage in sexual acts, documents said, and he &#8220;immediately notified hotel security and representatives for Defendant, obtained photo documentation, requested a room change, and called the local non-emergency police line (311) to report the incident.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Joseph filed his complaint after a $3 million lawsuit was filed against Jada Pinkett Smith by a former associate, Bilaal Salaam.<\/p>\n<p>Salaam claimed Jada approached him with physical threats of violence and demanded he sign a nondisclosure agreement while at a private gathering at a movie theater in\u00a0Calabasas\u00a0for her husband&#8217;s birthday in September 2021.<\/p>\n<p>Source: Fox News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Will Smith has been accused of sexual harassment by Brian King Joseph in a lawsuit filed in Los&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213007,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[156,129158,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-213006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-entertainment-world-news","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}