UPDATED STORY (12/31/2023 9:44 am ET): Nigel Lythgoe has responded to Paula Abdul’s lawsuit, calling her allegations of sexual assault “false” and “deeply offensive.”
“To say that I am shocked and saddened by the allegations made against me by Paula Abdul is a wild understatement,” the So You Think You Can Dance judge and executive producer said in a statement to TMZ on Saturday, December 30.
“For more than two decades, Paula and I have interacted as dear — and entirely platonic — friends and colleagues,” Lythgoe added. “Yesterday, however, out of the blue, I learned of these claims in the press and I want to be clear: not only are they false, they are deeply offensive to me and to everything I stand for.”
He went on: “While Paula’s history of erratic behavior is well known, I can’t pretend to understand exactly why she would file a lawsuit that she must know is untrue. But I can promise that I will fight this appalling smear with everything I have.”
ORIGINAL STORY (12/30/2023 at 9:55 am ET):
Paula Abdul has filed a sexual assault and gender violence lawsuit against American Idol executive producer and So You Think You Can Dance judge Nigel Lythgoe, citing alleged assaults that occurred while she worked on both shows.
In the suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Friday, December 29, Abdul accuses Lythgoe of assaulting her in the early 2000s — “during one of American Idol’s initial seasons,” the document states — and then again in 2015, during their time together on...
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