Posted on 07/27/2026 5:22:13 AM PDT by Libloather
A Netflix executive was fired from his $1.1 million a year job after revealing during a “trust exercise” at a work retreat that he had taken medically prescribed ketamine, a lawsuit has claimed.
Kevin Baillie, who was vice president and head of creative at Eyeline Studios, is suing the company after they launched an investigation into his comments that ultimately ended in his firing, the papers say.
Baillie, who’s been on the visual effects team for “Pirates of the Caribbean” and the “Harry Potter” franchises, says he took the drug under medical supervision in October and November of 2022 at a Santa Barbara clinic.
He sought the treatment for clinical depression after the death of his mother, according to the suit.
During what’s called a “Vulnerability-Trust exercise” at a January 2026 retreat at the exclusive Sendero Ranch, a Northern California property owned by Netflix, Baillie shared with his colleagues that he had undergone the treatment, the suit says.
Baillie claims he explained the reason why he had taken the drug but was investigated by Netflix. On March 18, 2026 a company investigator brought the incident up, “in a manner suggesting suspicion of recreational drug use,” the suit reads.
The executive was fired in April with the company’s attorney confirming “the ketamine therapy issue has factored into the termination,” the papers say, and go on to suggest Baille was denied up to a year of severance pay.
Baillie says in the lawsuit the “scope” of the investigation related to alleged profanity and drinking. He had been warned during his performance review that he should “drop one or two less f-bombs but don’t stop entirely.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
It’s funny you brought that up. I was out to lunch with some of my former subordinates after I had retired, and one of them asked me how I become to be such a great sergeant. I told them that I read Scott Adams books especially the Dilbert’s top secret management book ended the opposite.
F Bombs used to be okay back in the 1980s-90s.
I work on a trading floor. We are all straight commission.
I have been trading for almost 41 years.
Over that time we have really had to tone down the behavior and language on the trading floor. First of all there used to be almost no women traders. The few women we had were tough as nails.
Now, we have so many snow flakes that we have to watch what we say because someones feelings might get hurt. FEELINGS need to be left outside, off the trading floor.
We used to pick on everyone about anything. Your jammy shirt. Your shoes that look like you should be on the short bus back to the home. Your haircut. ANY physical defect. Like a zit, etc.
Then we would play practical jokes on each other. Especially if it was a slow day. There are legendary stories about that.
When the internet first came out there were guys watching porn on their desktop computer during the day. I had a guy that used to send me an email of the “Babe of the Day”. A picture of a different naked woman everyday.
Dirty jokes were told openly on the trading floor daily. No one complained. No one ever got sued. IF you had a problem with another trader you went in the conference room and worked it out LIKE MEN. Now, I would never sit down in a conference room with a woman trader without management being there. I don’t want to get in a he said, she said situation.
We now have five women traders. One just quit last week. A couple others have left in the last six months. The problem with women is that they take everything personally. As they said in the Godfather “its not personal, its just business”.
We lose people all the time. it is part of being in a straight commission business. We have lost multiple guy traders in the last year too.
SO, its no longer a Man’s World.
Yeah, imagine how different the movie Glengarry Glen Ross would have been if there was a woman in the office, LOL!
Obviously Netflix was looking for an excuse to jettison this $1.1 million black hole that hadn’t made them money since 2022. Netflix is under some financial pressure right now.
When trust me or trust us is said red flags are going up.
Other movies like Wall Street and Gordon Gekko speech about “greed is good” and I'm going to “rip their heads off and sh#t down their necks” got played too.
Plus the Bluto speech “did we give up when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor” speech.
And the speech in Apocalypse Now “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” All have been played during meetings on the trading floor. Especially during the Great Recession.
At a company Christmas party only have one drink and then it is club soda and lime. Been to too many holiday parties and have seen it all.
Never ever regretted being self employed. The corporate life style sucks the blood out of you.
1.1 million for being on a visual effects team?
Really?
Where do I sign up for that?
So a creative type is into booze, drugs, and cursing? Color me shocked.
Lesson here is to never trust anyone you work with. Trust exercises? More like the legal department looking for a reason to get rid of employees. Everything you say can and will be used against you.
Yup. I've NEVER trusted them. Company keeps claiming they cannot trace responses back to individuals, but I still don't give honest feedback. They would not like my feedback.
totally true ... another good rule for so-called “trust exercises” is “never tell ‘em anything you wouldn’t tell your grandmother” ... that, by the way, is the original Rule #1 for writing emails when email was first invented, which was before the public Internet was built ...
I got a survey from our local hospital after I spent 3 nights there. I am in a small town where a friend of ours was treated badly during Covid (and almost died.(He is Mormon). I did not return the survey.
Well, it is called "Special K".
ketamine is a legitimate treatment for depression, there’s even an FDA-approved version of ketamine for depression treatment ...
My wife is an infusion nurse in a hospital. She administers it all the time. Most of these folks are 100% medically sponsored drug seekers.
I think that is uncalled for. My wife died 2 years ago and I still ain’t over it.
Some people deal with loss better than others.
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