Legendary magazine Interview is in the midst of a crisis.
After we reported on Wednesday that the title — which was founded by Andy Warhol in 1969 — had been kicked out of its offices because of missing rent, now Page Six has learned it is locked in a multimillion-dollar lawsuit with a longtime senior executive.
Deborah Blasucci — who worked for the magazine for some 30 years — is suing the magazine’s owner, mogul and art collector Peter M. Brant, and his daughter, Interview president Kelly Brant, claiming they fired her because she “made too much money.”
Blasucci, who had at various times been president, executive VP and chief operating officer of BMP Media Holdings, which publishes Interview as well as Art In America and ARTnews among others, was fired in July 2016.
The suit, filed in November 2016, alleges that Kelly, as well as other Brant family members, “each told Ms. Blasucci in separate conversations that their father Peter M. Brant thought she made too much money.”
As well as what was — given her long tenure at the company — likely a hefty salary, the company also paid Blasucci’s rent and owed her a lump-sum severance package, plus a bonus, if she was fired “without cause.”
The suit alleges that Peter and Kelly instead pounced on a painful back operation that Blasucci underwent in February 2016 by claiming that she had “failed to ‘render services’ ” while she recovered — even though Blasucci claims she worked for them even while she was in severe pain. She alleges the Brants cruelly claimed they didn’t owe her the severance because her supposed absence meant they could fire her “with cause.”
Meanwhile, all the Interview and Brant art-publication staffers are still waiting to hear if they can return to work and get back into their Soho offices seized by marshals last week over nonpayment of rent.
Kelly Brant claimed the offices had been closed because of “differences regarding a new short-term lease.”