The former executive sued by Robert De Niro’s production company for alleged embezzlement has filed a counter suit, claiming that she was a “casualty” of “gender discrimination in the workplace”.

According to a legal complaint obtained by the Hollywood Reporter, the firm’s ex-employee Graham Chase Robinson claims that De Niro subjected her to “years of gender discrimination and harassment”, including “gratuitous physical unwanted contact”, “sexually charged comments” and treating her as an “office wife”, assigning her “stereotypically female duties such as housework”.

In the complaint, Robinson also describes De Niro’s decision to sue her as “a page out of the Bill O’Reilly playbook”, referencing the former TV presenter who left Fox News in 2016 after it was reported he had settled multiple sex harassment suits.

De Niro’s original complaint said that Robinson abused expense accounts to pay restaurant and hotel bills and wasted “astronomical amounts of time” watching Netflix during work hours, including 55 episodes of Friends during one four-day period in January.

According to Robinson’s complaint, De Niro called her a “bitch” and a “brat”, and asked her “to scratch his back, button his shirts, fix his collars, tie his ties, and prod him awake when he was in bed.”

“De Niro also stood idly by while his friend slapped Ms Robinson on her buttocks.”

In response, De Niro’s lawyer Tom Harvey has said: “The allegations made by Graham Chase Robinson against Robert De Niro are beyond absurd.”