YouTube group The Try Guys announces Ned Fulmer won't appear in videos after workplace affair

YouTube group The Try Guys said in a video posted Monday that co-creator and former executive producer Ned Fulmer will not appear in future videos following last week's news that Fulmer, who is married, had a relationship with an unnamed employee.

“There are several videos that we’ve deemed as fully unreleasable. You will never see them, and that is due to his involvement,” Zach Kornfeld said of co-creator Ned Fulmer, adding that that decision "cost us lots of money."

Group member Keith Habersberger said in the video that the remaining co-creators were "working with our editors in finding creative solutions" to other previously-shot footage that will be released and that Fulmer will be edited out of.

Fulmer will appear in some previously shot sponsored content, a decision that Habersberger characterized as "kind of weird."

“We also have some branded videos that we’ve already committed to, so when you see a video that’s sponsored in a few weeks ... it’s just how things are, and that’s why," he said.

The Try Guys are a group of four men — Fulmer, Habersberger, Kornfeld and Eugene Lee Yang — who catapulted to popularity by making vlog-style YouTube videos in which they try things like sampling entire menus at food chains or using a machine that stimulates the pain of childbirth. Their success has led to a book, a TV series on the Food Network and merchandise.

The men met in 2014 while working at BuzzFeed, where they launched the Try Guy video series, they told Glamour in a 2018 interview. They left BuzzFeed in 2018 to form their own company, which Digiday reported had grown to nearly two dozen staffers by last year.

The news that Fulmer won't appear in future videos comes on the heels of the Try Guys' announcement last week that Fulmer is no longer working with the group as a result of what they called "a thorough internal review" into his workplace relationship.

In the video posted Monday — which had 4.4 million views by Tuesday morning — the group provided more details about the review, which Habersberger said was prompted by "multiple fans" reaching out around Labor Day weekend to alert the group "that they had seen Ned and an employee engaging in public romantic behavior," Habersberger said.

"We reached out to check on that employee," he continued. "Ned confirmed the reports and since confirmed that this had been going on for some time, which was obviously very shocking to us."

In a statement posted to his own verified Twitter account last week, Fulmer admitted he had “lost focus and had a consensual workplace relationship” and apologized to his wife, Ariel Fulmer, who also posted a statement to her Instagram account last week thanking those who had reached out to her and requesting privacy for her family.

Ariel Fulmer appears on "You Can Sit With Us," a podcast with the other partners of the group members, but has been missing from the most recent episodes, prompting internet speculation among fans, who also noticed Ned Fulmer's absence from the Try Guys' recent videos.

The internal review into Fulmer's affair consisted of what Kornfeld described in Monday's video as a "thorough review of the facts" by an HR professional, followed by a “three-week process of engaging with employment lawyers, corporate lawyers, HR, PR, and more [professionals] in order to make sure we were taking all necessary steps," Yang said.

Habersberger added that while the group couldn't divulge details of the review, it had found that "Ned had engaged in ... conduct unbecoming of our team and we knew that we could not move forward with him."

The trio formally removed Fulmer as an employee and manager of the company on Sept. 16, Habersberger said in the video.

"We were obviously incredibly shocked and deeply hurt by all of this," Yang said. "This is someone who we'd built a brand and a company with for eight years. We feel saddened, not just personally but on behalf of our staff and our fans who believed in us."

The group requested privacy for "the family members and employees who may be caught up in this," Yang said.

Yang also requested that fans "exercise kindness" in light of the fact that "the internet has a tendency to be a lot harsher towards women than men," he said.