Lizzo performs at the BottleRock Napa Valley Music Festival on May 27 in Napa, Calif. Photo by Amy Harris/Invision/AP
LOS ANGELES — Three former dancers for Lizzo have hit the singer with a lawsuit claiming they were subjected to sexual harassment and hostile working conditions.
In the lawsuit filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, the dancers alleged they were pressured to touch nude dancers at a club in Amsterdam, ridiculed for their weight, and forced to participate in “excruciating” re-audition processes. The performers – Crystal Williams, Arianna Davis, and Noelle Rodriguez – worked with the “Juice” artist from 2021 to 2023.
Williams and Davis were previous contestants on Lizzo’s reality TV competition show, ” Watch Out for the Big Grrrls,” in which participants competed to join the singer’s touring dance group.
The filing obtained by The Times also lists Lizzo’s production company, Big Grrrl Big Touring, Inc., and her dance captain Shirlene Quigley as defendants.
“The stunning nature of how Lizzo and her management team treated their performers seems to go against everything Lizzo stands for publicly, while privately she weight-shames her dancers and demeans them in ways that are not only illegal but demoralizing,” the dancers’ attorney, Ron Zambrano, said in a statement.
In one instance, the suit accuses Lizzo of commenting on Davis’ weight after a performance at South by Southwest. She alleged that Lizzo and Quigley told her she seemed “less committed” to the job due to her apparent weight gain. The interaction gave Davis the impression that she “needed to explain her weight gain and disclose intimate personal details about her life to keep her job.”
Neither representatives for Lizzo nor Quigley responded to The Times’ requests for comment.
In another allegation, the dancers said that Lizzo goaded the trio into attending a sex show in Amsterdam and pushed them to engage with the performers.
“Lizzo began inviting cast members to take turns touching the nude performers” and to interact with them in graphic ways, the lawsuit claims. “Lizzo then turned her attention to Ms. Davis and began pressuring Ms. Davis to touch the breasts of one of the nude women performing at the club.”
Quigley was accused of castigating Rodriguez as a “non-believer” and telling others on tour that it was her mission to get Rodriguez to embrace her faith. Rodriguez then asked Quigley not to impose her religious beliefs. The dance captain then, per the lawsuit, became enraged and told Rodriguez that “no job and no one will stop me from talking about the Lord.”
It was also alleged that Quigley repeatedly “made comments deriding people who engaged in pre-marital sex, knowing that some members of the dance cast did not share her views.”
After convincing herself that her dancers had been heavily drinking the night before shows, the lawsuit said Lizzo required them to “re-audition for their spots and if [she] was dissatisfied with their performance at the end of the day, the dancers would be fired and sent home.”
What followed was a 12-hour rehearsal, in which dancers were granted very few breaks, according to the filing. One dancer who soiled herself due to the lack of breaks said she felt forced to continue rehearsing, fearing that “if she left the stage at any point during the audition she would be fired.”
According to Williams, she was the only dancer fired due to “budget cuts.” After receiving the news, Williams claimed she asked to speak with Lizzo about the decision but wasn’t allowed to discuss the decision with the singer.
Davis said she was fired by Lizzo after she was caught recording a group meeting with the “Truth Hurts” artist, according to the lawsuit. Davis, who has a medical condition that makes her “disoriented in stressful situations,” alleged she had made a habit of recording meetings when afflicted by her condition and then deleting them after reviewing them.
Rodriguez said she resigned on the spot after she saw the treatment of Davis.
“This resignation drew both Ms. Quigley’s and Lizzo’s ire. Ms. Quigley screamed at Ms. Rodriguez and Ms. Davis calling them disrespectful,” the suit claimed. “Then Lizzo aggressively approached Ms. Rodriquez, cracking her knuckles, balling her fists, and exclaiming, ‘You’re lucky. You’re so f— lucky!’ Ms. Rodriguez feared that Lizzo intended to hit her and would have done so if one of the other dancers had not intervened.”
In an allegation against Lizzo’s touring production company, the defendants said the organization treated the Black members of the dance team “differently than other members,” including suggesting that Black dancers were “being lazy, unprofessional, and having bad attitudes” while “none of these same allegations were leveled against” dancers who were not Black.
The defendants are seeking an unspecified amount for damages to cover lost earnings, emotional distress, medical expenses, and legal fees.
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