Lizzo is speaking out about the harassment lawsuits several former tour workers filed against her, sitting down with Keke Palmer on the actress’s podcast Thursday — the singer’s first interview on the matter since she was sued last year.
“I was literally living in my dream and then the tour ended and three ex-dancers just completely blindsided me with a lawsuit,” Lizzo said on the Baby This Is Keke Palmer podcast this week.
Lizzo was sued twice last year. Three ex-dancers — Arianna Davis, Crystal Williams, and Noelle Rodriguez — accused her of sexual harassment and fostering a hostile workplace environment. Her former wardrobe stylist Asha Daniels filed a suit a month later, accusing the singer and several members of her team of sexual harassment, disability discrimination, illegal retaliatory termination, and assault. Lizzo scored a key victory earlier this month when she was dismissed individually from Daniels’ suit. Her company Big Grrrl Big Touring Inc is still listed as a defendant.
Lizzo said she and her team are “continuing to fight the other claims until they’re all dismissed. And not dropped, dismissed.”
“The hardest part about all of this is that none of these things are true,” Lizzo told Palmer, further calling the claims “ridiculous.” She continued, “They’re very silly claims. I could go through every single one. The sexual harassment one is really the one that upsets me the most.”
In the dancers’ complaint, they alleged that Lizzo had invited them to an Amsterdam club while on tour, where they claim she 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 stated that she didn’t invite any of the dancers, further claiming that only two of the dancers who sued were there.
“There was no mandatory invitation, I didn’t even know they were were coming,” she said. “I’m not gonna be like, ‘Hey you two get out of here.’ I was like, ‘Come through.’ Was it a fun environment in a bar where everybody’s lit and everybody’s excited about what’s happening? Yes.”
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Lizzo alleged that the situation “very consensual,” but added that her boundaries with her employees are now “wide as the ocean.”
“I don’t think that people who I employ should even be privy to how I am in a bar at this point,” Lizzo said. “I think that this experience taught me healthy boundaries. But to be real with you, it was such a fun night.”
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In a statement, the dancers’ attorney Ron Zambrano said his clients felt they didn’t have a choice as 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,” Zambrano said. “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.”
