'Hollywood Squares' Showrunner Fired For Telling 3 BIPOCs "Don't Rob Me"

EXCLUSIVE: Vincent Rubino, executive producer/showrunner of the upcoming Hollywood Squares revival on CBS, has been let go from the show for allegedly making a racially insensitive comment to BIPOC members of the production staff.

According to a source close to the matter, the veteran game show producer is accused of raising his arms and saying "don't rob me" to three persons of color — believed to be Black and Latinx/Latinx — who work as production assistants. Another person allegedly overheard the comment and reported it to HR.

Swift action was taken by Jesse Collins Entertainment, which is producing the new Hollywood Squares for CBS with Drew Barrymore's Flower Films, and Rubino was removed from the show, sources said. Rubino declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the studio also declined to comment.

Rubino is an experienced producer in the game show space with credits such as The $100,000 Pyramid, Supermarket Sweep, Brain Games, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and 2010's The Newlywed Game.

CBS announced in May that it was bringing back Hollywood Squares for a 2025 midseason debut. Barrymore will occupy the center square. Hollywood Squares involves two contestants who play tic-tac-toe to win money and prizes. The "board" for the game is a vertical stack of open-faced cubes, each occupied by a celebrity seated at a desk and facing the contestants. The celebrities are asked questions and the contestants judge the legitimacy of their answers to win the game.

The original Squares aired on NBC in the 1960s. The series piloted in 1965 and debuted in its entirety on the same network in 1966.