Lizzo’s former employees have recently broken their silence on singer’s “disheartening” response to sexual harassment and fat-shaming claims in a lawsuit filed by them on August 1.
It is reported that three former back dancers, Arianna Davis, Crystal Williams and Noelle Rodriguez brought the case against the About Damn Time hit-maker, who also owns the production company Big Grrrl Big Touring (BGBT).
“Initially for me it just further deepened my disappointment in regards to how I was feeling and how I was treated,” said Williams in the first UK interview with Channel 4.
Williams explained, “I think the overall theme in all this is that our experiences were our experiences and our traumas were our traumas. In bringing that forward, it feels like it was disregarded completely. It feels like we were made out to be putting out false allegations when that’s not the case.
While speaking to BBC, Davis reacted to Lizzo’s statement on how she’s being “portrayed as the villain”, saying, “She’s less of a villain and more of an anti-hero to me. A villain is someone with no redeemable qualities. They are just bad and evil and terrible.”
“But an anti-hero is someone who does bad things but had redeemable qualities. Do I think Lizzo can take this, and change and be who she says she is? Yes, absolutely,” remarked Davis.
Davis continued, “I want her to be who she said she was when I first met her, I don’t we don’t want this to be some sort of tear-down campaign for her, we want justice to be served, people to be heard and then we want change to be made. I do believe she’s capable of that change.”
Meanwhile, Rodriguez added, “I don’t think she’s a villain necessarily, but I do think she needs to be held accountable for all the things she has done, or enabled, and created this environment. I think it’s time that we start holding people accountable for that – it happens way too often.”
When asked why they went public with their complaints, William stated, “We tried to handle this in-house as much as we possibly could. But nobody wanted to hear us out so this was absolutely a last resort.”
[Via]
