On Thursday, August 3, a viral tweet that surfaced on social media stated that singer Lizzo, who is currently facing a lawsuit from her former employees, forced them to walk down from midtown Manhattan all the way across the town to Brooklyn to get her a single slice of cheesecake.
However, the claim turned out to be fake. The post that surfaced online, making the false accusations, seemed to be an altered version of a past story on Page six written by one of its chief reporters Francesca Bacardi.
It was about rapper Diddy, who once made the cast members of his MTV show Making Da Band walk across the Brooklyn Bridge for a single slice of cheesecake.
It became clear after a while that the Page Six story was altered, with Diddy’s name and image replaced by Lizzo’s. Unfortunately, that did not stop netizens from once again calling out the songstress for her alleged toxic work practices.
“It just keeps getting worse”: Lizzo’s fake cheesecake headline earns wild reactions from netizens
While Lizzo may not have forced her former backup dancers to fetch her a single slice of cheesecake from one corner of New York City to another, she has been sued by three of them, who have accused her of alleged s*xual harassment, and her production company Big Grrrl Big Touring Inc. of creating a hostile work environment.
Not only that, but the allegations in the lawsuit by plaintiffs Ariana Davis, Crystal Williams, and Noelle Rodriguez that was filed at the Los Angeles County Superior Court on August 1 also state that the rapper-singer-songwriter-actress allegedly forced one of them to touch a n*ked performer at an Amsterdam club.
They also accused her of subjecting all three of them to “excruciating” 12-hour-long auditions, following fake reports of them drinking on the job. In addition, the Big Grrrl Small World singer was also accused of fat-shaming one of them for alleged weight gain, before insulting and firing her from the job.
So, when the fake cheesecake headline emerged on social media, netizens somehow presumed that it was true, sparking hilarious reactions online. Here are some of them.
The overall charges against the four-time Grammy Award-winning songstress include s*xual, religious, and racial harassment, disability discrimination, fat-shaming, assault, abuse, wrongful termination, interference with prospective economic advantage, and false imprisonment.
The lawsuit also accused the captain of Lizzo’s dance team Shirlene Quigley of shaming those engaging in premarital s*x, sharing lewd s*xual fantasies with colleagues, simulating oral s*x, publicly discussing the virginity of one of the plaintiffs, and proselytizing (promoting one’s religious beliefs negatively and without permission while provoking conversion into another religion of their preference).
While Lizzo instantly did not comment on the lawsuit, on Thursday, she took to her social media accounts and maintained her innocence. In a lengthy text, she said how the ‘last few days have been gut-wrenchingly difficult” following all the severe backlash from fans and the press.
She also stated how the lawsuit was full of “sensationalized stories” from her former employees who lost their jobs for being “inappropriate and unprofessional.” She followed it up with:
“I am not here to be looked at as a victim, but I also know I am not the villain.”
Following Lizzo’s denial of wrongdoing, the plaintiffs along with their attorney Ron Zambrano appeared on Thursday’s episode of CNN This Morning and slammed the Coconut Oil singer some more. In fact, Ariana Davis called her social media statement “disheartening” and said that “the facts are the facts.”
Since the news of the bombshell lawsuit broke out, Lizzo has lost over 200,000 followers on Instagram but still continues to have around 13.4 million followers.
Meanwhile, an Oscar-nominated documentarian Sophia Nahli Allison went on record to say that in 2019 she had to quit working with Lizzo as she was disrespected, gaslit, and hurt by the singer’s “arrogant, self-centered, and unkind” behavior. She also doubled down by showing support for the plaintiffs.
On Tuesday, Beyonce too during her Renaissance Tour in Boston, skipped naming Lizzo while taking the names of other Black female singers who were trailblazers of the music industry.