Lizzo accused of weight-shaming and harassing former tour dancers. Now they’re suing

Three former dancers have accused Lizzo of sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment in a lawsuit filed in California, NBC News first reported.

The lawsuit was filed Tuesday, Aug. 1, in Los Angeles County Superior Court, a spokesperson told McClatchy News in an email.

Former dancers Arianna Davis, Crystal Williams and Noelle Rodriguez accused Melissa Viviane Jefferson (professionally known as Lizzo), her production company Big Grrrl Big Touring and her dance team captain Shirlene Quigley of creating a hostile work environment through sexual, religious and racial harassment, disability discrimination, assault and false imprisonment, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit says those actions led to the creation of a hostile work environment.

The dancers met Lizzo while filming the singer’s reality television show “Watch Out for the Big Grrrls” on Amazon Prime Video, according to the lawsuit. Davis and Williams were eventually fired, and Rodriguez resigned.

Representatives for Lizzo and Quigley did not immediately respond to McClatchy’s request for comment.

Lizzo and Big Grrrl Big Touring

Lizzo publicly presents herself as a an advocate for self-love, no matter one’s body shape or size. She often sings about empowering women and has previously highlighted work from Black and transgender creators by bringing them on stage with her during her performances and award show appearances.

But the complaint tells a different story about her private behavior — saying she subjected the dancers to weight-shaming, sexually denigrating behavior and pressured them “into participating in disturbing sex shows” at cabaret shows in Europe, the dancers’ legal team said in a news release.

The complaint says Lizzo drew attention to a dancer’s weight after an appearance at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, pressured dancers to engage with nude dancers at a strip club in Amsterdam’s Red-Light District and “tricked them” into going to a cabaret bar in Paris “to learn something or be inspired by the performance.”

The dancers also said Lizzo’s production company made it clear they weren’t supposed to take on other work during breaks between when the U.S. leg of “The Special Tour” wrapped in November 2022 and the end of the European leg in February 2023.

The dancers requested to be paid a portion of their tour rate during breaks and were offered half of what they requested — after the production company’s accountant scolded them for being “unacceptable and disrespectful” and said it would be cause for termination, the complaint says.

“Only the dance cast — comprised of full-figured women of color — were ever spoken to in this manner, giving (them) the impression that these comments were charged with racial and fat-phobic animus,” the complaint says.

The complaint goes on to describe how Black dancers were treated “differently” from their white counterparts “who often accused the Black members of the dance team of being lazy, unprofessional, and having bad attitudes,” the complaint says.

“Not only do these words ring familiar as tropes used to disparage and discourage Black women from advocating for themselves, but the same accusations were not levied against dancers who are not Black,” the complaint says.

At the strip show in Amsterdam, the complaint says Lizzo invited cast members to take turns touching the nude dancers and pressured Davis to touch one of the performer’s bare breasts even though she had loudly, and more than once, said she didn’t want to, the complaint says.

Lizzo started chanting for her to do it and others joined in, so Davis finally complied “in an attempt to bring an end to the chants,” the complaint says. The group then “burst into laughter,” according to the lawsuit.

“Plaintiffs were aghast with how little regard Lizzo showed for the bodily autonomy of her employees and those around her, especially in the presence of many people whom she employed,” the complaint says.

In a statement, the dancers’ attorney Ron Zambrano elaborated on what he said was a hostile work environment.

“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 absolutely demoralizing,” Zambrano said in an email to McClatchy News.

Lizzo’s dance team captain

The documents present accusations against Quigley, including harassing dancers about religion and shaming them for having “premarital” sex.

The lawsuit says Quigley publicly discussed one dancer’s virginity.

During filming for “Watch Out for the Big Grrrls,” Quigley somehow found out Davis was a virgin — which “became a topic of extreme importance” to the dance captain, the complaint says.

Quigley would often bring it up in conversations, mentioned it in interviews and later posted about it on social media, “broadcasting an intensely personal detail about (Davis) to the world,” the complaint says. The dancer said she never gave Quigley permission to publicly share this information.

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