The legal drama surrounding Lizzo is only getting messier. Three weeks after the Grammy winner was sued by three of her former dancers for sexual harassment and workplace misconduct, TMZ reports that she is now planning to countersue.
Recently surfaced photos appear to show the three dancers “happily carousing” and “gleefully reveling” with performers at a topless cabaret show in Paris, Lizzo’s attorney, Mark Singer, told TMZ. He added that the photos contradict the dancers’ claims that they were pressured to attend the show, as they alleged in their lawsuit.
Moreover, the photos were allegedly taken a month after Lizzo and the dancers went to a club in Amsterdam where, they claimed in their suit, the singer forced them to eat fruit from naked performers’ vaginas.
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That’s not the only Lizzo-related news that broke on Wednesday. Months before the lawsuit was filed, the singer’s team quietly settled a payment dispute with 14 dancers who said they appeared in Lizzo’s HBO Max documentary without their consent, the Los Angeles Times reports.
When this group of 14 dancers decided to escalate their issue with Lizzo and co-production company Boardwalk Pictures, settlement agreements were eventually signed in February, according to the Times. None of the 14 dancers who received the settlement are involved in the harassment lawsuit.
Per the Times, Slay Smiles, the manager for the 14 dancers, wrote in an email: “This was supposed to be a safe space to express and share with the Principal talent [Lizzo], so by sharing this unauthorized footage to the public without their approval/permissions, has truly exploited these women and violated the emotional safety they had in those moments.”
Smiles said he advocated for the dancers and helped secure a total payout of $109,551, which amounted to between $7,092 and $7,545 for each dancer.
Singer told the Times: “Lizzo had nothing to do with it and knew nothing about it.”
