A separate lawsuit tied to Lizzo’s 2022 documentary, Love, Lizzo has been settled.
This suit involved 14 of the singer’s dancers, with each receiving between $7,092 and $7,545 for footage that appeared in the doc, alleging that inclusion of the material hadn’t been approved, the Los Angeles Times reports. For the dancers, the footage was particularly intimate, which showed them discussing how misogyny, weight-shaming, and racism affect them.
The dancers’ manager, Slay Smiles, told the publication that the doc, “truly exploited these women and violated the emotional safety they had in those moments.” Lizzo wasn’t sued, but rather the co-production company, Boardwalk Pictures, and a “Lizzo entity,” both of which settled the dispute in February. Lizzo’s attorney, Martin Singer told the publication that she “had nothing to do with it and knew nothing about it.”
Footage from the doc was taken in 2019 when Lizzo and the dancers were preparing for the MTV Video Music Awards. Smiles said the dancers weren’t given a contract for the footage.
The attorney for Boardwalk Pictures, Alan Brunswick told the Times that the dancers “knew the cameras were there. I don’t think the documentary was even contemplated at that point.” It was only later that the dancers found out the footage would be included in the doc when a producer offered each one $350 plus a 10 percent agency fee to appear.
The payout total was $109,551. None of the dancers from the documentary settlement are part of the harassment lawsuit. The latter suit was brought against Lizzo earlier this month, with three dancers claiming that they were sexually harassed and weight-shamed, and cites incidents of racial discrimination and disability discrimination.
Lizzo later responded, calling the allegations “false” and that they were “as unbelievable as they sound and too outrageous to not be addressed.”
According to the dancers, one such instance took place in Amsterdam, when Lizzo and the dancers went to see some nude entertainment. Lizzo is accused of pressuring a dancer to touch a nude performer’s breasts and to “catch dildos launched from the performers’ vaginas and eat bananas protruding from the performers’ vaginas,” per the complaint.
TMZ reports that Lizzo is now planning to sue the three dancers after photos from another night out in Paris—a month after Amsterdam—shows the dancers having fun after seeing a topless cabaret show. The dancers also said that they were made to go to the topless show in Paris.
