Last year, Lizzo was sued by her backup dancers — Arianna Davis, Crystal Williams, and Noelle Rodriguez — for sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment. She denied the allegations, then was sued by another former tour employee, Asha Daniels. She attempted to get the lawsuit against her thrown out to no avail, and she has publicly stated that she's "getting tired of putting up with being dragged by everyone in my life and on the internet." Now, the disgraced pop star went on the Baby, This is Keke Palmer podcast and addressed the situation again.
“I was literally living in my dream and then the tour ended and three ex-dancers just completely blindsided me with a lawsuit,” the "Truth Hurts" singer said. Earlier this month, Lizzo was dismissed from Daniels' lawsuit, about which she said, "We're continuing to fight the other claims so they're all dismissed."
One of the accusations was that Lizzo invited her dancers to a club in Amsterdam during a tour and encouraged them to “take turns touching the nude performers, catching dildos launched from the performers’ vaginas, and eating bananas protruding from the performers’ vaginas.” On the podcast, Lizzo argued that there was no mandatory invitation and everything was consensual. “I don’t think that people who I employ should even be privy to how I am in a bar at this point,” she said. “I think that this experience taught me healthy boundaries. But to be real with you, it was such a fun night.”
However, the dancers’ attorney Ron Zambrano said in a statement (per Rolling Stone) that his clients felt they didn’t have a choice because she was their boss:
There is an utter lack of awareness by Lizzo failing to see how these young women on her team who are just starting their careers would feel pressured to accept an invitation from their global celebrity boss who rarely hangs out with them. There is a power dynamic in the boss-employee context that Lizzo utterly fails to appreciate. We stand by the claims in the lawsuit and are prepared to prove everything in court with Lizzo on the stand under oath before a jury of her peers, not spouting nonsense and lies rationalizing a failure to take accountability on a podcast.
Watch the podcast episode below.
