The subject of Netflix's new docuseries The Man With 1000 Kids is threatening to sue the streaming giant with a slander lawsuit.
NBC News reports Jonathan Meijer, the sperm donor at the center of the three-episode series, is rejecting the show's portrayal of him. He says he fathered approximately 550 children, not the 1,000 the documentary claims. He also rejects the notion that he mixed his sperm with another donor's to see whose genes would "win."
“Technically I did not lie,” Meijer told NBC News. “I followed the guidelines of every large commercial international sperm bank that does not inform the recipients about the amount of offspring one donor will produce. I was doing a much better thing, I gave the parents an estimated number, this was better and more info than they would ever get at any clinic.”
Meijer maintains he stopped donating sperm in 2019, and takes offense to being called a "serial donor."
“I dislike the word serial, because every donor is a serial [donor]. It’s just like, a donor helps multiple families. That’s quite common; it’s quite normal,” Meijer said. “So this is really already adding this extreme negative aspect in the documentary, like ‘serial’—serial killer, serial donor.”
In 2017, Meijer was prohibited from donating any more sperm in the Netherlands by the Dutch Society for Obstetrics and Gynecology. However, he allegedly continued donating in other countries.
Meijer says he's in the process of filing a lawsuit against Netflix. Josh Allot, the director of The Man With 1000 Kids, claims he spoke with Meijer about what would be covered in the series.
“We approached him a number of times to be interviewed and gave him a right to reply at the end,” Allott said. “He refused to comment on any of the allegations in the series.”
