Oprah Winfrey is being sued by a woman who accused her of completely ripping off the hit series Iyanla: Fix My Life.
The plaintiff, Otisa C. Strickland, has had beef with the 62-year-old entertainment mogul for years. Strickland says that the show that appears on the OWN is a carbon copy of a show that she created called The Agency, according to TMZ.
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Both Iyanla: Fix My Life and The Agency feature a counselor traveling across the country to help solve people’s serious life problems.
On Tuesday, Strickland filed papers in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi.
“The two television shows are virtually identical,” Otisa C. Strickland said. “Both shows involve a counselor that travels all over the United States to people homes [sic] to counsel them about their problems.”
The complaint says, “The plaintiff brings this action to halt and recover its damages from defendant’s ongoing infringement of it rights to The Agency. Specifically, plaintiff seeks to stop defendant’s blatant theft of its copyrightable expression.”
In the lawsuit, Strickland will be representing herself.
Iyanla premiered in 2012 starring Iyanla Vazant. The series returned for its sixth season in September, drawing 670,000 total viewers according to Nielsen. The viewership slipped 7 percent compared to the Season 5 premiere, according to The Wrap.
Strickland wants Oprah’s show pulled off the network, and she is asking for a lot of money in compensation.
Do you think Oprah Winfrey should have to pay up? Or is the idea for the television series too broad to assume that Oprah ripped off of Strickland’s idea?
