Bear-McClard was accused of sexual misconduct and grooming teenage girls in March 2023.
Benny Safdie is speaking out about the grooming allegations against Emily Ratajkowski's ex-husband, Sebastian Bear-McClard.
The Uncut Gems producer and Elara Pictures co-founder was accused of sexual misconduct and grooming teenage girls in March 2023. Per the outlet, a spokesperson for Benny and his brother, Josh Safdie, had previously said they fired him upon becoming aware of the alleged behavior in July 2022
"It's disgusting, and when you find out something about somebody that you didn't realize, you just have to be much more careful," the actor-producer said in a new interview with GQ. "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."
Per the article, as of March 2023, Bear-McClard was involved in private mediation with the Safdie Brothers.
ET has reached out to Bear-McClard for comment.
The allegations against Bear-McClard involved inappropriate on-set behavior for the Safdie Brothers' Good Time and Uncut Gems, both A24 releases under the pair's first look deal with the entertainment company.
A source told IndieWire that A24 was not aware of any allegations against McClard when it licensed Good Time for U.S. distribution in 2016 and that the distributor never received a complaint during the making of 2017's Uncut Gems.
The new upcoming Elara Pictures project does not involve Bear-McClard.
Benny, meanwhile, will not co-direct the next Safdies movie with his brother Josh, who will instead direct solo.
The Oppenheimer star did ensure that Elara Pictures is very much intact, telling the outlet, "Elara is still there. We work on a lot of documentaries and there’s just a constant flow of ideas."
He continued, "It just felt like, OK, there's things that I want to explore that don’t necessarily align right now with Josh. 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."
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