Comedian Lucy Beaumont Fears Being Blacklisted By TV Industry After Blowing Whistle On David Walliams

Comedian Lucy Beaumont has said she has risked her television career by speaking out about David Walliams because the industry doesn’t tolerate troublemakers. In an interview with Sky News (watch below), the Taskmaster star and Hullraisers writer revealed that she was one of the “whistleblowers” on Walliams, who has been accused of using his fame and power to prey on teenage girls. Walliams, known for Little Britain and Doctor Who, strongly denies wrongdoing. Beaumont told The Cathy Newman Show that a young person working on a TV show approached her with concerns that Walliams allegedly hosted teenagers in his dressing room. Beaumont said she contacted one of the young girls. “She was in a really bad way,” Beaumont said. “I was really worried she was going to take her own life because of it. She had put stuff online, and there was evidence that she was in a dressing room. I offered to pay legal fees to try and get her some protection — and I’m not saying necessarily that what she said was true — but I wanted to help her because it was a world that she was really out of her depth with.” Watch on Deadline Beaumont continued: “I believe she had signed an NDA [non-disclosure agreement] to say — and this is the issue with some of these NDAs — the NDA wasn’t just about she couldn’t talk to the media. It was that she couldn’t — I’m nearly crying telling you this — talk to family or friends or a therapist.” She added: “There’s no proper duty of care. There’s no social services that you deal with, and it’s partly because the industry is very well-managed.” Turning to her decision to speak out, Beaumont said she doesn’t think she will work in television again because people “lose work” for challenging high-profile individuals and are painted as a “trouble causer.” She added that people are “very replaceable” in the business and there are “lots of other people who can do your job.” Beaumont joked that she would become a Pilates teacher. ITV News and The Guardian published their investigation into Walliams on Tuesday, detailing how he allegedly used his position on shows like Little Britain and Britain’s Got Talent to meet teenagers and pursue sexual contact with them. One of the teenagers was alleged to be 15 at the time of her interaction with Walliams. Beaumont said she spoke to The Guardian as part of its reporting. “I am not a sexual predator… I have not broken the law,” Walliams told ITV News. “I am devastated that some of the women I met ten to twenty years ago have now expressed hurt or anger towards me.” He continued: “Looking back, I realise that at times I behaved thoughtlessly towards other people I had casual sexual relationships with… I realise I did not always take people’s feelings properly into account. That is something I regret. And whilst a power imbalance is inevitable when one party is famous, abusing that power is something else entirely and it is something that I never did.”