A former Netflix executive is suing the company after he says a confession he made during a workplace vulnerability exercise cost him his job and more than a year's worth of severance pay. Kevin Baillie, who served as vice president and head of creative at Netflix's visual effects division, Eyeline Studios, was fired in April, according to court papers reported by The New York Post.
Baillie earned roughly $1.1 million annually. His lawsuit says he disclosed during a January retreat at Netflix-owned Sendero Ranch in Northern California that he had undergone ketamine therapy at a Santa Barbara clinic in 2022 while experiencing clinical depression following his mother's death. He said the drug was prescribed and administered under medical supervision.
The retreat included a vulnerability-trust exercise that encouraged employees to share personal experiences. According to the lawsuit, a Netflix investigator later questioned Baillie about the disclosure on March 18 and raised the treatment in a manner suggesting suspicion of recreational drug use.
"The ketamine therapy issue has factored into the termination," the attorney said, according to the lawsuit.
The complaint also said Netflix's investigation examined allegations that Baillie used profanity and consumed alcohol. His previous performance review had addressed his language but did not direct him to stop swearing entirely.
"Drop one or two less f-bombs but don't stop entirely," the performance review said, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit also addressed an incident involving alcohol during the retreat. Baillie told colleagues that his former father-in-law had taught him to drink a Guinness while standing on his head.
"His colleague immediately asked for a demonstration," the complaint said. "Rather than withhold the openness that the session had encouraged, he performed the trick."
The lawsuit argues those incidents, which occurred in a setting the company designed to encourage openness, were then used against him in the termination process.
Netflix's widely publicized culture memo promotes vulnerability and candor among employees. The company describes itself as a professional sports team rather than a family and uses what it calls a keeper test when managers evaluate whether to retain staff.
"If the answer is no, we believe it's fairer to everyone to part ways quickly," Netflix said of the keeper test, which involves assessing whether a manager would fight to keep a worker or hire that person again knowing everything about them.
The company's culture materials also state that employees are expected to participate in open feedback. "You willingly receive and give feedback; you are open about what's working and what needs to improve; you admit mistakes openly and share learnings widely," the site states.
Baillie's lawsuit argues that his participation in the trust exercise was consistent with what Netflix's own culture encouraged, and that the company's investigation framed those disclosures as misconduct rather than the candor it publicly promotes.
The complaint says Netflix also denied Baillie as much as one year of severance pay following his dismissal. The suit does not name a dollar amount sought in damages beyond the lost compensation.
Netflix has not publicly commented on the lawsuit.
