Seyi Omooba, actor fired for anti-gay remark, ordered to pay £300,000 legal costs
Actor sued for religious discrimination after being dropped from a theatre production of The Color Purple, over an anti-gay remark she made when she was a teenager
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Actor Seyi Omooba has been told to pay £300,000 in legal costs after losing a court battle over her sacking from a production of The Color Purple.
Omooba claimed she was fired from the show at The Curve Theatre in Leicester in 2019 and shut out by her agency, Global Artists, after it emerged that she had made an anti-gay remark on social media.
The 26-year-old, who is Christian, had written on Facebook: “I do not believe homosexuality is right.”
The comment was posted when Omooba was a teenager.
It was resurfaced by Hamilton star Aaron Lee Lambert, who accused her of hypocrisy for taking on the role of Celie in The Color Purple.
Read more:
“Do you still stand by this post?” Lambert tweeted in March 2019. “Or are you happy to remain a hypocrite? Seeing as you’ve now been announced to be playing an LGBTQ character, I think you owe your LGBTQ peers an explanation.”
Omooba, who denied that Celie is a lesbian character, said the theatre and her agents asked her to apologise but she refused.
In February, an employment tribunal rejected her claim for religious discrimination. This week, she was ordered to pay the theatre’s legal costs of nearly £260,000, and her former agency’s bill of around £54,000, The Times reports.
Her lawyers said she would fight on.
In a joint statement, Curve chief executive Chris Stafford and artistic director Nikolai Foster said: “We have always felt the case lacked any merit from the outset, but Seyi Omooba and her legal team continued to disregard our pleadings and chose to take our theatre to court irrespective of the facts.”
They said the tribunal had been “used as part of a wider campaign orchestrated by Christian Concern,” which resulted in “significant human and financial cost”.
The statement continues: “Whilst we welcome this news, we would like to reiterate we do not condone any negativity aimed at Seyi Omooba and we respectfully ask anyone in support of Curve to remain kind and respectful.”