Who Is the ‘SEAL Team’ Staffer at the Center of Stephen Miller’s Fight Against Hollywood Diversity?
Aspiring TV writer Brian Beneker, who has been a script coordinator for more than 20 years, isn’t the only straight white man who feels he’s been shut out of screenwriting jobs because of diversity initiatives. But so far, he appears to be the only one willing to seek out Stephen Miller’s America First Legal fund, aligning himself with a Trump-world figure who is particularly loathed by progressives.
With his lawsuit against CBS and Paramount alleging that he faced discrimination when he wasn’t hired as a writer for CBS’s military drama SEAL Team, Beneker has become the vehicle Miller uses to wage a war against diversity and inclusion efforts in the entertainment industry. In doing so, Beneker has defined himself in a way that will likely last. When reached by phone, he declined to comment, as did his lawyers.
A former senior policy adviser and speechwriter to Donald Trump, Miller is a native son of Southern California who has returned to take on Hollywood, arguably a stronghold of the radical left. He is well-funded: His 2023 tax filings reveal that his foundation saw a nearly 600 percent increase in fundraising in 2022, raising $44 million from $6 million the year before. That money is being used to fund lawsuits challenging diversity efforts at a variety of businesses and organizations.
Miller’s foundation is also trying to stir up trouble elsewhere in Hollywood. In February, America First Legal wrote a letter to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, calling on the agency to investigate The Walt Disney Company and its subsidiaries for discrimination. The letter cited the entertainment giant’s inclusion standards, which outline criteria to promote representation of “underrepresented groups” (the standards do not explicitly mention race or gender). The company is seeking “heterosexual white men” to serve as plaintiffs in its lawsuit against the company, according to an ad that reads, “Are you a victim of discrimination due to illegal DEI policies at Disney?”
Despite data showing that women and people of color have been slow to advance into some jobs in Hollywood, Beneker alleges that he was a victim of discrimination when he expressed interest in becoming a writer for SEAL Team but was not placed on the payroll. Beneker served as the series’ script coordinator from 2017 to 2022 and was given the opportunity to write three episodes as a freelance writer. The showrunners typically give assistants and script coordinators a chance to write a script.
Beneker’s lawsuit claims that the “unlawful race and gender balance policy” led to the hiring of unnamed “less qualified applicants,” including women, minorities, or LGBTQ writers. He wants $500,000 and a court order that would make him a full-time producer on SEAL Team (which is in its final season) and prohibit him from continuing to use the allegedly discriminatory hiring practices.
By becoming the face of Miller’s project in the entertainment industry, Beneker risks being ostracized by former collaborators on the show and other writers—some of whom are white men—who may not even know him. Brandon Margolis, whose credits include The Blacklist and S.W.A.T., wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that he didn’t know anything about Beneker’s specific situation but nonetheless offered his opinion: “Dude, it’s not up to you to decide how qualified you are… If you’ve been given a script and your [showrunner] decides not to hire you, there’s a simple reason: the script isn’t good enough.”
And from writer-producer-director Jim Fagan: “The show knows me, my work ethic, and my creativity better than any other show on Earth that wouldn’t hire me, so now I guess I’m going to sue for my career.”
More pointedly, Queen of the South screenwriter Jorge A. Reyes tweeted: “I worked with this guy in 2000 – I was a writer, he was a script coordinator and a real weirdo AT THE TIME. He thinks he’s never gotten a writing job in 24 years because he’s white?? It’s because he’s weird and the work isn’t good.”
