Paula Abdul Settles Sexual Assault Suit With ‘American Idol,’ Sets Trial With Nigel Lythgoe

Paula Abdul has tentatively settled with the production companies behind American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance and is now heading to a July 2025 trial against only show executive Nigel Lythgoe after she sued the parties for sexual assault, sexual harassment, and negligence in December.

“The parties went to mediation, and the corporate defendants settled out,” Abdul’s lawyer Douglas L. Johnson told a judge at a Tuesday morning hearing. “The one remaining defendant left in the case is Nigel Lythgoe.” Lythgoe’s lawyer did not object to Johnson’s request for a trial date, so Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Thomas D. Long ordered it set for July 28, 2025.

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In a filing leading up to the hearing, one of Abdul’s lawyers wrote that settlements with FremantleMedia, American Idol Productions, and related producers 19 Entertainment and Dance Nation Productions were reached at a March 18 mediation. The lawyer didn’t disclose any terms, saying only that the deals were still “being finalized.” (Lawyers for all four production companies attended the hearing remotely and did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Rolling Stone.)

Abdul filed her explosive lawsuit in December, alleging Lythgoe sexually harassed and assaulted her multiple times while she was hosting or otherwise working on the reality competition shows. She alleged that during one of American Idol’s “initial seasons,” Lythgoe trapped her in an elevator, forced her against the wall, grabbed her genitals and breasts, and forced “his tongue down her throat.”

Lythgoe vehemently denies the allegations. “Plaintiff has concocted purely fictional allegations against Mr. Lythgoe — some dating back more than 20 years — that amount to an unjustified and baseless character assassination,” Lythgoe’s lawyer Amitabh Banerji wrote in an April 15 filing in the case.

Since Abdul filed her lawsuit, four more women have stepped forward to sue Lythgoe as Jane Does. Two of the women filed a lawsuit in early January. They allege Lythgoe groped and tried to kiss them in 2003 after they were selected as contestants on his All American Girl game show. One of the women alleged in the lawsuit that he pinned her against a piano and “forced his mouth and tongue onto her despite her numerous statements telling him not to and attempts to pull her face away from his.” Lythgoe’s lawyers are asking the court to strike the complaint on the grounds that the allegations are “entirely fictional” and beyond the statute of limitations. A hearing is set for May 15.

A fourth accuser filed a lawsuit in February, alleging Lythgoe forcibly groped, kissed, and digitally penetrated her inside his chauffeured vehicle in 2016. A rep for Lythgoe told Rolling Stone that the alleged car incident “never occurred.” A case management conference is set for June 17.

The fifth accuser filed her lawsuit in March, alleging that Lythgoe sexually battered her at his home in 2018. “After a few minutes of professional discourse, Lythgoe suddenly forced plaintiff against the property’s exterior side wall by shoving his knee between her legs and then started licking plaintiff’s neck, touching her genitalia and groping her all over. Plaintiff tried to push Lythgoe away from her but he had her pinned against the wall so that she could not move,” the partially redacted complaint reads. The matter is set for a case management conference on July 8.

In his response to Abdul’s lawsuit, Lythgoe and his lawyers called the Grammy-winning artist “a well-documented fabulist, with a long history of telling wild stories that are untethered from reality and are primarily designed to attract attention and make Abdul appear to be the victim of dreadful misfortune.” They included excerpts from purported personal emails dating back to 2014 and 2015 in which Abdul appeared to express warm feelings toward Lythgoe and called him “sweetheart.”

Abdul quickly fired back, saying Lythgoe was engaging in “classic victim shaming” by attempting to use her emails against her. “Mr. Lythgoe fails to appreciate that he held a position of power over Ms. Abdul. He was a producer on American Idol and SYTYCD and she was the talent. He held the cards to her career in his hand and he knew it. It thus is no surprise that Ms. Abdul placated to his ego with positive messaging and seeming adoration. These are the defenses that many women like Ms. Abdul had to adopt to deal with men who abuse their power,” her lawyers wrote in a statement to Rolling Stone.

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