A lawsuit has been filed by three former dancers of pop diva Lizzo, alleging that she created a hostile work environment and engaged in sexual harassment.
The lawsuit contains claims of assault, false incarceration, discrimination, harassment on the basis of race, religion, and sexual orientation, and more.
The vocalist is also charged with forcing a dancer to touch a performer’s breasts and fat-shaming a dancer.
For comment, Lizzo and the other accused parties have been contacted.
The artist has not yet publicly addressed the accusations in the case, which are still pending a trial.
The lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles on Tuesday and included claims that between 2021 and 2023, the dancers were coerced into going to sex shows and engaging with them.
According to allegations made against Lizzo, whose actual name is Melissa Viviane Jefferson, Ms. Davis was “pressured to touch the breasts” of an artist at an Amsterdam nightclub. Ms. Davis initially refused, but later gave in “fearing it may harm her future on the team” if she didn’t comply.
Dance choreographer Tanisha Scott and Lizzo, who is renowned for appreciating her body and self-love, are also accused of fat-shaming Ms. Davis when she was on tour.
Mrs. Davis claims that the two asked if she was “having trouble with something because she was less dedicated to her role on
The former dancers who are suing the singer, her dance captain, and her production firm Big Grrrl Big Touring (BGBT) are Arianna Davis, Crystal Williams, and Noelle Rodriguez.
“In professional dance, a dancer’s weight gain is often seen as that dancer getting lazy or worse off as a performer. Lizzo’s and Ms. Scott’s questions about Ms. Davis’s commitment to the tour were thinly veiled concerns about Ms Davis’s weight gain,” the documents allege.
Though never explicitly stated, the questions “gave Ms Davis the impression that she needed to explain her weight gain and disclose intimate personal details about her life in order to keep her job”, the legal documents say.
In addition, the case claims that BGBT employees reprimanded dancers for “unacceptable and disrespectful” behavior they displayed while on tour, without elaborating on the specifics of the behavior.
“Only the dance cast—a group of curvaceous women of color—were ever addressed in this way, giving [the dancers] the sense that these remarks were loaded with racial and fat-phobic animosity,” the dancers claim.
In addition, it claims that Shirlene Quigley, the leader of the dance team, ridiculed people who had premarital sex and forced her Christian views on performances.
She is also charged with publicly discussing and sharing on social media the virginity of one of the former dancers.