Retaliation

UPDATE: Eight months after a former Fox Sports hairstylist accused Skip Bayless of repeatedly pressuring her into having sex with him for over a million dollars, the plaintiff, the ex-Undisputed host and Fox Sports have reached a deal.

A request for dismissal by Noushin Faraji was approved on August 28 after initially being filed earlier that month. As usual in such sexual battery and retaliation cases, no details on the settlement were provided – but you can be sure money changed hands.

As for Fox themselves, the Murdoch-owned company kept it short. “We are pleased that this matter has been resolved. There will be no further comment.”

PREVIOUSLY, JAN 6 PM: Skip Bayless and Fox Sports are reunited, though not in a way either party would have hoped for.

The former Undisputed host and the network division run by Erik Shanks and Mark Silverman have been hit with a jury-seeking complaint claiming Bayless propositioned a hairstylist at Fox Sports with $1.5 million if she would have sex with him.

Characterizing Fox Sports as den of iniquity, the 14-claim lawsuit filed January 3 in Los Angeles Superior Court also alleges that Bayless repeatedly tried to “pressure” plaintiff Noushin Faraji “into having sex with him.”

“Ms. Faraji brings forth this action because for over a decade at Fox, she was forced to endure a misogynistic, racist, and ableist workplace where executives and talent were allowed to physically and verbally abuse workers with impunity,” reads the suit that claims sexual battery, retaliation, hostile work environment and fraudulent business practices.

Read the sexual battery and 13 other claims against Skip Bayless, Fox Sports, Joy Taylor and others here.

In tones and terms familiar to those who have read past lawsuits involving sexual harassment and more that Fox entities and executives have been slapped with over the past decade, the potential class action adds: “When Ms. Faraji and others came forward to report the wrongdoing, instead of addressing their concerns, Fox retaliated against them while the perpetrators and those who protected them were inexplicitly promoted. This case thus represents yet another in a long line of cases chronicling the toxic culture at Fox, marked by bad faith promises and repeated failures to address a poisonous and entrenched patriarchy.”

Detailing the July 2021 occurrence in which Bayless is alleged to have offered Faraji that $1.5 million to sleep with him, the suit then damningly says: “Approximately one week later, Mr. Bayless made another advance at Ms. Faraji. Ms. Faraji responded: ‘Skip, stop, you have a wife.’ Mr. Bayless responded: ‘Aren’t you Muslim? Doesn’t your dad have three to four wives?’ Ms. Faraji responded that her father was dead, and when Mr. Bayless looked taken aback, she made an excuse to leave.”

Faraji claims that in 2024 Bayless said to her while she was giving him a haircut that “he fantasizes about having sex with her and asked how much money it would take for her to have sex with him. Bayless supposedly went on to say: “The more you say no the more I want you.”

Bayless is also alleged to have accused Faraji of having a sexual relationship with Bayless’ then co-host and “archrival” Shannon Sharpe, an allegation Faraji says was totally false. Sharpe on his and Chad “Ochocinco” Johnson’s Nightcap podcast Sunday briefly addressed being mentioned in the actions by saying, “That ain’t got nothing to do with me.”

Following several tense on-air exchanges between Bayless and Sharpe, the latter jumped to ESPN in June 2023. In August 2024, ex-ESPN host Bayless was pink-slipped by FS1 after eight years. Both sides painted that departure in rosy terms, but declining ratings and then the cancellation of Undisputed were said to be a major issue – as Faraji notes in her suit. Not long after Bayless’ exit, Faraji herself was fired from FS1 “by removing her from the schedule entirely, using fabricated business necessities as a pretext,” the lawsuit says.

“We take these allegations seriously and have no further comment at this time given this pending litigation,” a Fox spokesperson told Deadline today. Reps for Bayless did not respond to a request for comment from Deadline. If they do, this post will be updated.

Truth is, with current Fox Sports host Joy Taylor and FS1 Content VP Charlie Dixon named as defendants in the suit, as well as Bayless and a number of Fox Sports corporate entities, Fox better take this allegations seriously.

In her 42-page suit by attorneys Rana Ayazi and Devin Abney, Faraji says Taylor did nothing to help her and actually told her to “get over it” after Dixon allegedly groped the hair stylist at a 2017 birthday party the on-air star was hosting. In fact, along with office intrigue (to put it politely) and an alleged affair between Taylor and Dixon and the power plays over women the VP seemed to be making at FS1, Speak co-host Taylor became “romantically involved” with FS1 colleague Emmanuel Acho in 2020, according to Faraji – a relationship she found FS1 superiors asking her about over and over.

All of which, along with Faraji calling out Fox for ”Labor Code violations” and “unfair, unlawful, and fraudulent business practices” when it comes to pay, finds the plaintiff seeking class action certification, a variety of unspecified damages, and Taylor and Dixon to be fired.

As the filing says:

At this point, Ms. Faraji seeks justice. She knows that Mr. Dixon used his position of power to coerce women into having sex with him and used it as justification to grope Ms. Faraji. She knows that Mr. Dixon did not immediately fire her (after Ms. Taylor and Ms. Faraji had a falling out) only to appease Mr. Bayless by providing him with a plaything. Despite Ms. Faraji being an excellent hairdresser and continuously being requested by talent, she was shrunken down to how much she could appease Mr. Bayless, and once Mr. Bayless was gone, so was her job.

After the suit became public, a number of associates of Bayless and others chimed in, among those who Bayless’ former First Take partner Stephen A. Smith.

“The Skip Bayless I know has a hard time giving away $15, he’s one of the cheapest people I know,” the discerning NBA sports commentator and cultural icon noted on his podcast Monday. “That’s just me. But that doesn’t mean that I have any inside knowledge about any of this, I don’t, I don’t, and I’m not going to get involved.”

Smith went on to say: “I know Skip, and I’m very, very heartbroken that he finds himself in this situation, being accused of these allegations. But I can’t be over the airways being irresponsible and attaching truth or innocent, you know, or guilt to anything that I know nothing about. All I can say, and I don’t think it’s a crime to say, is just like I said with Jay-Z. The person that I’ve known for 25 years. I’ve never seen anything like that from that person, anything close to that from that person. That’s the same thing that I would tell you about Skip Bayless.”

Jay-Z has been accused of raping a 13-year-old girl at a MTV VMAs party in 2000 with the much accused and currently incarcerated Sean “Diddy” Combs and a yet unnamed female “Celebrity B.” The rap superstar, real name Shawn Carter, has vehemently denied the claims and has his lawyer Alex Spiro trying a swath of tactics to get the charges dismissed.

Bad Boy Records founder Combs was arrested September 16 on charges of sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution. Already behind bars at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center and denied bail, Combs’ trial is set to start May 5 next year.