Vivica A Fox Sued by Former Business Partner for Poaching Dancers and Defamation

Vivica A. Fox, former host of the short-lived Lifetime series “Vivica’s Black Magic,” has been slapped with a lawsuit by her former business partner for libel, theft, defamation and more, surrounding the idea and cast of the cancelled show.

In the suit, Jean-Claude LaMarre accuses the actress of trying to destroy his business, reputation and emotional well-being, after trying to steal dancers from his own show, “Black Magic Live,” which consists of an all-black male troupe. LaMarre says Fox “employed a concerted effort of defamation, humiliation and misrepresentation to steal talent from it, and confuse Black Magic Live’s audience providing the public with false statements that Fox’s copycat dance venture was in fact the real ‘Black Magic Live’ dance revue.”

The suit alleges that Lifetime picked up the series based on his show after Fox agreed to star in the series as the owner. Since the network couldn’t obtain the rights to the original name, LaMarre says they changed it to “Vivica’s Black Magic.” That all came to an end after Fox’s controversial interview with Power 105.1’s The Breakfast Club, when Fox said gay men were not welcomed at her shows, prompting a boycott of the series and live shows. However, that did not stop Fox from pursing the idea, according to LaMarre, the actress “secretly began planning to start her own male revue business, ‘Xplicit Minds,’” using dancers from the original show and television series.

LaMarre is suing for an unspecified amount of damages.