Lizzo answers her critics: ‘I’m a fat, black, happy girl – they were always going to try to tear me down’

Lizzo: ‘A big thing happened to me. But it’s so behind me’. Portraits: Shaniqwa Jarvis/The Guardian.

Hair: Matthew Jean-Pierre at The Only Agency. Makeup: Alexx Mayo at The Only Agency. Nails: Eri Ishizu at The Wall Group.

Styling assistant: Zaferhan YumruView image in fullscreenLizzo: ‘A big thing happened to me. But it’s so behind me’. Portraits: Shaniqwa Jarvis/The Guardian.

Hair: Matthew Jean-Pierre at The Only Agency. Makeup: Alexx Mayo at The Only Agency. Nails: Eri Ishizu at The Wall Group.

Styling assistant: Zaferhan YumruInterviewLizzo answers her critics: ‘I’m a fat, black, happy girl – they were always going to try to tear me down’Simon HattenstoneThree years ago, the pop star was riding high after a sellout tour. But then a slew of shocking accusations from her former dancers changed everything. Where does she go from here?

On 30 July 2023, Lizzo finished a 10-month world tour. She had played 80 shows across North America, Europe, Oceania and Asia, selling more than 853,000 tickets and grossing $86.3m.

The rapper turned pop star was on top of the world. Then everything came crashing down.Two days later, three of her former dancers alleged that they had been subject to sexual harassment, a hostile work environment, religious and racial discrimination and fat-shaming on the tour.

Two had been sacked, and one resigned. After the accusations, there was a huge pile-on from mainstream media and social media. And it seems to have gone on ever since.

Lizzo, whose real name is Melissa Viviane Jefferson, disappeared. We were told that she was busy recording the follow-up to her huge hit album Special. But there were also rumours that she’d had a terrible breakdown.

Last month, the new album, Bitch, was finally released. The reviews were disappointing, and the sales even more so. After her two previous albums had each shifted more than a million units, Bitch failed to make the top 100 in either the US or Britain.

It seems that the world was not prepared to forgive Lizzo, whether the allegations were true or not.Today, she’s in Los Angeles and we meet by video link. Just as her publicist warns me about topics that are off-limits because of specific legal issues, Lizzo bounds on to the screen, sporting new honey-blond curls, but still with the irrepressible energy of old.

She could just as easily be addressing a festival crowd as me and her publicist. “I can’t talk about that, whatever you’re talking about! Hehehe!”

She throws her head back and roars with laughter. “What’s up y’all? I’m gooooood.”

Of all the downfalls in the music biz, Lizzo’s is one of the saddest. She seemed to be such a force for good. She had just stolen the show at Glastonbury in 2023, was fabulously talented and the most surprising of role models – a 325lb, classically trained, sonic sex bomb.

Lizzo was an old-school preacher with a very modern message about body positivity, sex positivity, diversity positivity; who shook her ass and flaunted her flute in the face of the world, and showed us that anything was possible.View image in fullscreenLizzo at Glastonbury in 2023. Photograph: Samir Hussein/WireImageShe represented a culture in which old boundaries and expectations had been vanquished, and we were largely free to be what we wanted to be, so long as we did it with kindness.

And then came the allegations. Were they malicious, made to destroy the reputation of a woman who seemed too good to be true? Or was Lizzo a fraud?

Could the woman who reclaimed the word “bitch” to proclaim her self-worth in Truth Hurts (“I just took a DNA test, turns out I’m 100% that bitch”) really merit that description in the old-fashioned sense? Was the artist who celebrated her natural curves in Tempo with the mantra “Thick thighs save lives” really a fat-shamer?Last December a judge ruled that the fat-shaming allegation did not have enough merit to proceed to a civil trial.

But we are none the wiser about the other claims. All we know is that Lizzo has insisted that there is no substance to them and has refused to settle out of court. And that it has taken a hell of a lot out of her.

In an essay she wrote last year on her Substack she confirmed she became “deeply suicidal” and for a while had “cut off her loved ones”.I tell her I saw her at Glastonbury in 2023 and that she was fantastic. She says she knows she was: “Everything was fantastic at Glastonbury.”

She sips from her iced coffee. It was such an amazing time for you, I say. “It’s always an amazing time for Lizzo.”

Well, I suggest gently, perhaps the past three years have been on the tough side. Silence. After you’d been so celebrated, things got a little difficult, I suggest.

More silence. The raucous belly laughter has gone. I ask how she’s coped.

“Ermmmm. You get to a level of fame and celebrity when your fame overshadows your art. And I’m there!

Ha!” She laughs, but this time there’s not much humour in it. “I never signed up to be just a famous person.

I was always, like, I’m going to make art for