Just about 8 years prior to Paula Abdul accused Nigel Lythgoe of sexual attack, he made a questionable funny story about their courting.
After Abdul, now 61, joined the So You Assume You Can Dance panel in 2015, she and Lythgoe, now 74, spoke to Us Weekly and different journalists about running in combination at the display.
“What chemistry? But really, we’ve known each other for so long now,” Lythgoe quipped to Us in January 2015. “I was always an admirer of Paula back in the U.K. before I came here, and to be able to work with her [as an executive producer] on Idol for all those years and see how she was mistreated by Simon [Cowell].”
Lythgoe labored at the back of the scenes on American Idol all through its early seasons when Abdul served as a pass judgement on along Cowell and Randy Jackson. Abdul, who in the end left the making a song display in 2009, chimed in to jokingly declare that she were “abused” via Cowell.
Lythgoe, for his phase, corrected himself all through the clicking junket. “Abused and mistreated,” he added. “I wanted to be the next person to abuse her some more.”
The off-kilter remark resurfaced after Us showed on Saturday, December 30, that Abdul filed a lawsuit in opposition to Lythgoe, suing him for sexual attack/battery, sexual harassment, gender violence and negligence. She alleged that he sexually assaulted her two times, as soon as once they labored in combination on American Idol and a 2nd time all through their shared SYTYCD tenure round 2015.
Lythgoe vehemently denied Abdul’s allegations, calling them “deeply offensive” and “untrue.”
“To say that I am shocked and saddened by the allegations made against me by Paula Abdul is a wild understatement. For more than two decades, Paula and I have interacted as dear — and entirely platonic — friends and colleagues,” Lythgoe instructed Us in a observation. “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 added: “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.”
Abdul’s lawsuit used to be filed underneath California’s Sexual Abuse and Duvet-Up Responsibility Act, which allowed sufferers a one-year window to document sexual abuse complaints that might differently be out of doors of the statute of boundaries. The cut-off date expires on Sunday, December 31.
In case you or somebody has been sexually assaulted, touch the Nationwide Sexual Attack Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).