There’s trouble in the cosmos: According to Lauren Sánchez’s former yoga teacher, the stroke of genius that led to her debut children’s book, The Fly Who Flew to Space, might not have been her own. Since announcing the project last year, Jeff Bezos’s fiancée has said her book about “a little fly … who’s flying” was inspired by (in no particular order): a fly she saw trapped in a helicopter while getting her pilot’s license, Bezos’s trip to space, her late-diagnosed dyslexia, “STEM,” “geography,” and “inclusion.” She celebrated the book’s launch this week, rubbing elbows with Kim Kardashian and Kris Jenner in Alexander Wang. But according to a lawsuit obtained by “Page Six,” Sánchez’s former yoga teacher Alanna Zabel claims she was the brains behind the little fly that flew, alleging that she’d divulged her children’s-book idea about a “cat who flies to Mars” to her client over the course of 16 years. Her book, Dharma Kitty Goes to Mars, was released in 2021, and is currently available on Amazon, of all places, for $16.95.
Per “Page Six,” according to the lawsuit, Zabel hosted private yoga lessons for Sánchez between 2007 and 2011. Over a period of 16 years, the instructor claims the duo had numerous “oral and written discussions” about her feline-astronaut concept and that she’d even gone as far as attempting to contact Bezos about “giving proceeds of sales from the book to Bezos Earth Fund and Bezos Academy.” Zabel, who wrote the complaint herself in lieu of legal representation, added that she had trusted Sánchez with her “intellectual property” despite her “continual and outrageous acts of jealousy.”
Zabel claims this nearly two-decade-long catfight has caused her significant emotional harm, and she is seeking an undisclosed amount in compensation and a trial by jury. I can only hope that means we’ll get to see Dharma Kitty and an insect named Flynn duke it out in court.
The Cut has reached out to Sánchez’s representatives for comment and will update the post if we hear back.
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