The pop star-flautist felt blindsided by the sexual harassment lawsuits brought against her by her former backup dancers.
Lizzo is finally speaking up about the lawsuit brought against her by her former backup dancers in August 2023. Dancers Arianna Davis, Noelle Rodriguez and Crystal Williams filed a lawsuit alleging that Lizzo (full name Melissa Vivane Jefferson) created a hostile work environment where both sexual and racial harassment existed. An additional lawsuit was filed a month later in September 2023 by her former stylist, Asha Daniels, similarly claiming that Lizzo created a racialized and sexualized environment.
Lizzo, as you can imagine, has some opinions about the lawsuits and the touring environment that existed and is adamant that she did nothing wrong.
On a recent episode of Keke Palmer’s podcast, “Baby, This is Keke Palmer,” Lizzo claims to have been blindsided by the lawsuit; she denied all of the allegations when the suits were first filed via Instagram, calling them “outrageous.”
“These were people that — I liked them and appreciated them as dancers, respected them as dancers. So I was like, what? But then I heard all the other things like sexual harassment, and I was like, they’re trying well, I don’t know what they’re trying to do, but these are the types of things that the media can turn into something that it’s not.”
According to the lawsuit filed by the dancers, Lizzo allegedly forced the dancers to touch nude performers at a club during a stop in Amsterdam, treated the Black dancers differently than the non-Black dancers, and weight-shamed them. Daniels’ lawsuit alleges that all of the staff, essentially, was harassed and bullied regularly at every tour stop.
Lizzo did have some small wins in the on-going court battles; Lizzo and her tour manager, Carlina Gugliotta, were dropped as individuals in the suit brought by Daniels because Daniels worked for Lizzo’s company. Lizzo’s touring company, Big Grrrl Big Touring remains a defendant in the suit.
We’re sure both Lizzo and the allegedly aggrieved parties want this saga to end soon- hopefully that comes with peace for everybody involved.
Panama Jackson is a columnist at theGrio and host of the award-winning podcast, “Dear Culture” on theGrio Black Podcast Network. He writes very Black things, drinks very brown liquors, and is pretty fly for a light guy. His biggest accomplishment to date coincides with his Blackest accomplishment to date in that he received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey after she read one of his pieces (biggest) but he didn’t answer the phone because the caller ID said “Unknown” (Blackest).
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