Defamation and libel are off the table when it comes to the $40 million lawsuit filed earlier this year against the production team behind Jennifer Lopez’s hugely popular strip club movie,
Hustlers. Lopez’s character Ramona was based on real-life hostess at New York’s Scores Gentleman’s Club Samantha Barbash and the subject is not happy with the depiction. Barbash was suing the film’s producers (including JLo’s own Nuyorican Productions) because she claims that they had attempted to exploit her likeness and defame her character. Among the issues Barbash took with the film was a scene in which Lopez’s
Ramona is seen “using and manufacturing illegal substances in her home where she lived with her child.” Barbash felt that the scene was “untrue and offensive.” A U.S. District court judge, however, ruled differently."Barbash pled guilty to drugging individuals without their consent,"
wrote the judge presiding over the case. "The Pressler Article reports that Barbash concocted the recipe for the mixture of illegal drugs that rendered the scheme’s victims vulnerable to the fraud. Nor does the FAC plead that the Defendants acted with malice in asserting that Barbash herself used drugs. That assertion is the least offensive of all of the statements of which Barbash complains and is naturally connected to the scheme to which Barbash pleaded guilty and which she discussed with journalists."[video_embed id='-1']THROWBACK: JLo on why now is the perfect time for 'Hustlers' [/video_embed]
Hustlers, which had its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, took its plot from a story published in
New York Magazine in 2015 (Julia Stiles plays the movie’s journalist character). The widely read piece by writer Jessica Pressler detailed a scheme involving Barbash and several other dancers at a NYC strip club who worked in concert to drug wealthy men and avail them of their cash. The grift got Barbash and her co-conspirators through the 2008 financial crisis. After that, it got them arrested.Because Barbash pled guilty to charges stemming from the scheme in open court and also shared the story with Pressler (off the record, she says), the judge ruled against her claim that the producers acted based on actual malice.As for her opinion of the film itself, Barbash told
Vanity Fair in 2019 that she “wasn’t that impressed” by the picture. Lopez, she said, looked great, but her co-star Cardi B, “would have maybe played a better me.”[video_embed id='-1']BEFORE YOU GO: Sweet baby attempts to sing 'You Are My Sunshine' with his mom [/video_embed]
