Less than a week ago, a woman went public with her claim that Ryan Seacrest subjected her to harassment, abuse and assault over the course of several years while she worked for him at E!. Seacrest denied it and basically said the woman, Suzie Hardy, was lying and attempting to extort him. Except she never asked for money, and first went to E! to handle it quietly, and only went public when E! covered Ryan’s ass in the investigation. Hardy had witnesses to the abuse too. All of this caused Ryan and E!-corporate to have “crisis meetings” about how to handle the E! Oscar Red Carpet show, which Ryan is hellbent on doing still. Well, guess what? He’s still going to host the show this evening, but it’s going to be terrible. The whole red carpet is going to be terrible:

Ryan Seacrest won’t just be asking the questions on this year’s Oscars red carpet. The E! mainstay will be the question. Rob Silverstein, executive producer of the syndicated entertainment-news show “Access,” will prep his hosts Scott Evans and Kit Hoover to grill nominees and other celebrities about the #MeToo movement and the politics surrounding it.

“And then,” he added, “we will ask them whether or not they will talk to Ryan Seacrest.”

One New York City power publicist who represents A-listers said she’s advising her clients to skip interviews with Seacrest altogether.

“I’ll be shocked to see who stops to talk to Ryan,” she said. “He’s in trouble.”

Sources told Page Six that celebrities have been practicing answers to the inevitable barrage of questions involving alleged abusers Harvey Weinstein and Woody Allen, and publicists have been working overtime to make sure their clients “don’t step in a pile of s–t” during interviews, as one Los Angeles publicist with Oscar-nominated clients said.

“You don’t want your client caught off-guard and hijacked or ambushed. You want them to be well-prepared, and if they want to give their opinion, you want them to voice it in such a way that it will get their message across, but that it won’t get them in hot water,” said the LA flack.

“You give them the information and let them know what you know,” he said. “But Ryan’s employers are having him there because he’s been cleared and you have to remember, Ryan has relationships with a lot of people personally,” he said, pointing to Oscars host Jimmy Kimmel’s recent announcement that he will let Seacrest interview him: “Listen, you know, we should at the very least afford people the opportunity for truth, what the facts of the story are before hanging them out to dry,” Kimmel told Variety.

[From Page Six]

I don’t like what Kimmel said there – we’re not “hanging Ryan out to dry” – we want him to step aside from making an appearance on E!’s Red Carpet Show because A) we’ve always wanted that, because he totally sucks at his job and B) we believe his accuser and having him ask questions about Me Too and Time’s Up will seem… awkward and unsettling.

All of this is just part and parcel of the larger problems over at E!. It’s all connected – Catt Sadler quitting the network after they refused to pay her as much (or commensurate to) Jason Kennedy, E! covering Ryan Seacrest’s ass, and this new lawsuit: a veteran female producer on E!’s red carpet programming says she was fired after she “allowed” celebrities to trash E! on the E! Golden Globes red carpet show. Debra Messing, Eva Longoria and other celebrities trashed E! on camera for the Catt Sadler situation, and those interviews went out live, or on a delay of only a few minutes. The woman suing is named Aileen Gram Moreno and she’s already filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission – go here to read more. E!’s argument is that Moreno was just bad at her job. How many women are they going to throw under the bus with that line? And how many times will E! Corporate look the other way when Ryan Seacrest is literally groping terrified subordinates? But hey, at least Ryan isn’t one of those mouthy bitches who, like, wants women to support each other on E!’s airwaves.

Photos courtesy of WENN.