The Pussycat Dolls sue newspaper over “prostitution ring” claim

The Pussycat Dolls are suing The Daily Mail for defamation after it ran a series of articles last October claiming them as a “prostitution ring” whose members were “hooked on drugs.”

A 32-page lawsuit filed in the New York Supreme Court blasts the stories as “false” without “even the most basic check” in an attempt “to grab salacious headlines to sell their product.”

The paper’s primary source was Kaye Jones, whom The Daily Mail wrote up as a former member of the act.

However, the Pussycat Dolls’ contend that Jones was just a background singer who tried to join the group when it got a record deal in 2003, but was rejected.

In the band’s court documents they dismiss Jones as “a disgruntled, unreliable and biased person looking for her 15 minutes of fame.”

They contend that if the publication had done some fact checking, it would have realised that Jones’ name only appeared as a back-up vocalist on two 2014 tracks: ‘Sway’ and ‘We Felt Like Going’.

Aside from Jones’ claims of the “prostitution ring” who slept with music executives, and drugs, she also contended that while the Dolls were paid $600 a week, she alleged, founder/manager Robin Antin (“the den mother from hell”) and their record company Interscope “made all the money”.

Antin, a choreographer, formed the Pussycat Dolls in Los Angeles in 1995 as a singing and burlesque troupe.

They performed weekly at the Viper Room, with the lineup changing constantly.

Christina Aguilera, Christina Applegate and Carmen Electra were among those who were in the lineup.

The Dolls finally settled to a permanent one, comprised of Nicole Scherzinger, Carmit Bachar, Ashley Roberts, Jessica Sutta, Melody Thornton and Kimberly Wyatt.

They had worldwide hits with ‘Don’t Cha’, ‘Buttons’, ‘Stickwitu’, and their first album PCD.

Some of them appeared in the 2003 film Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle dancing to Henry Mancini‘s ‘The Pink Panther Theme’.

However, there was internal conflict, caused mainly by the media spotlight falling on Scherzinger.

Bachar left before the release of their second and final studio album Doll Domination, which contains singles ‘When I Grow Up’ ‘I Hate This Part’ and ‘Jai Ho! (You Are My Destiny)’.

After their split, there were TV spinoffs to find new members.

The Dolls’ lawyer is Nashville-based Richard Busch, who represented Marvin Gaye’s family against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams in the ‘Blurred Lines’ lawsuit.