Skip Bayless offered a co-worker $1.5 million for sex, according to a lawsuit filed by a former FS1 employee.
The indecent proposal from Bayless, allegedly made in July of 2021 to FS1 hairstylist Noushin Faraji, is but one of the attention-grabbing accusations made in the suit filed Friday by Faraji in Superior Court for the State of California, County of Los Angeles. The named defendants are Bayless, FS1 executive vice president of content Charlie Dixon, FS1 host Joy Taylor, and the FOX Corporation, parent company of FS1.
The suit, reported on Sunday by Front Office Sports, is framed as labor litigation, and Noushin’s attorneys ask the court for certification as a class action on behalf of "current and former non-exempt hourly employees” of FOX over the last four years.
But the wage issues raised in the suit are overwhelmed by the personal experiences and grievances Faraji raises in the complaint, much of which reads like the script of a tawdry television show. A particularly dramatic episode, at that. Bayless made the offer to pay for sex while knowing Faraji was in the midst of an ovarian cancer scare, the complaint alleges, and was part of what Faraji describes as his years-long romantic pursuit and harassment of her, which also included unsolicited and unwanted hugs, kisses, and assorted other touchings both at company gatherings and in private. Bayless hinted that Faraji’s job security depended on whether she acquiesced, according to the suit. Faraji claims in her complaint that she tried to rebuff Bayless by reminding him that he has a wife, to which he allegedly responded, "Aren’t you Muslim? Doesn’t your dad have three to four wives?" Other than the amount of money and approximate date, there are no specific details in the complaint about how Bayless made the alleged sex proposition.
The complaint says Bayless also repeatedly accused Faraji of having sex with his FS1 co-host, Shannon Sharpe, and told her he knew this was going on because of the “body language” he witnessed from Faraji and Sharpe when they were together on the set.
Bayless, who left FS1 in August, isn’t the only staffer who comes out poorly in Faraji’s descriptions of the sports network as a hellhole workplace. Taylor, a former co-host of Undisputed alongside Bayless and Sharpe, is portrayed with particular vehemence. Taylor is described in the complaint as “a bartender and radio host in Miami with very little TV experience” who was gifted a TV career by Dixon in exchange for having a romantic affair with him. The complaint says Bayless was initially against hiring the inexperienced Taylor for Undisputed, so Dixon arranged a dinner with the parties where, according to Faraji, Taylor “arrived in provocative clothing and acted in a provocative manner.”
Bayless remained unmoved after the dinner, and only agreed to take on Taylor as a “favor” to Dixon, according to the suit. The document also alleges Taylor allowed her liaisons with Dixon to break up her marriage, and then had a subsequent engagement get derailed when her fiance found out she was involved with the network bigwig.
Faraji further claims in the suit that she learned that Taylor was pursuing a physical relationship with former NFL player turned FS1 host Emmanuel Acho in hopes of landing a gig on another network show, Speak for Yourself. So Faraji tried to counsel Taylor “that she should probably not sleep with Mr. Dixon and Mr. Acho at the same time, as Mr. Dixon is a very powerful man that may become very angry.” The alleged advice went unheeded, according to the complaint. And soon enough, Taylor turned on Faraji and, among other slights, “began openly mocking Ms. Faraji’s English” and said “she needed a black hairstylist.” Faraji defended her cultural coif credentials by pointing out in the complaint that she was personally responsible for “the hairstyles of over 10 black background dancers in Cee Lo Green’s music video ‘Fuck You.’”
Her workplace travails also included being called a “Persian bitch” and a “dog” by FS1 staffers. “To call someone a dog is one of the most offensive insults in the Persian culture,” the complaint reads.
For her pain and suffering and that of other current and former FS1 employees, Faraji asks the court to assess financial damages “in an amount to be proven at the time of trial.”
As of publication of this story, FOX had not responded to Defector's request for comment on the litigation. According to the Superior Court of California database, no further action on the case has yet been scheduled.
Faraji was fired by FS1 in August 2024 after the cancellation of Undisputed. Faraji said in the suit that she has undergone psychological counseling in hopes of getting over her experiences at the network. With the help of professionals, according to the complaint, Faraji has “concluded that she never wants to work with Mr. Bayless again.”
The full complaint can be read below:
