There\u2019s one episode of The Simpsons<\/em><\/a> where Lisa joins the high-IQ society, Mensa. The club has all the town\u2019s most weaselly characters\u2014Principal Skinner, Dr. Hibbert, Comic Book Guy\u2014and together, they feed on each other\u2019s worst qualities. After an incident involving Chief Wiggum and a reserved gazebo, the Mensa chapter ousts the town mayor. But when Lisa and her pals conquer Springfield, the power goes to their heads. They turn against friends and family, bickering about inane laws like mandatory classical music at the dog tracks, a broccoli juice program, and the metric system. When it all blows up in their faces, the angry mob chases Lisa and Mensa out of office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two decades after that episode aired, the voice actor behind Lisa Simpson<\/a>, Yeardley Smith, now stands accused of staging her own explosive takeover. In this instance, it\u2019s not a cartoon town, but a true-crime podcast called Small Town Dicks<\/em>, about detective cases in unnamed real towns across the country. Until this year, Smith co-hosted the show with her former best friend, Canada-based actress Zibby Allen. But Allen now claims Smith edged her out of all ownership rights, fired her without notice, and launched the furious legal battle, previously unreported and now ongoing, in which each ex-friend is suing the other in Los Angeles County Court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The case hinges on the meaning of a single phrase: \u201cco-creator.\u201d Namely, Allen says she was one; Smith says she wasn\u2019t. For her part, Smith claims in legal documents that it was Allen who staged the coup, overstaying her welcome and inviting herself into territory that was Smith\u2019s to start with. \u201cNotwithstanding the fact that Yeardley Smith has publicly stated in interviews and on social media that Zibby Allen co-created [the podcast] with her,\u201d Allen\u2019s attorney, Bryan Freedman<\/a>, wrote in a statement to The Daily Beast, \u201cafter the show became successful, Yeardley terminated Zibby from the show and sued her, trying to revise history by now denying that Zibby co-created the show.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Small Town Dicks<\/em>, unfortunately abbreviated in court documents as \u201cSTD,\u201d premiered in 2017 as a podcast \u201cabout the big-time crime that\u2019s happening in Small Town, USA.\u201d In each episode, Smith and Allen would dive into cases from towns across the country, interviewing the investigators who broke them and pulling from primary source recordings\u2014911 calls, suspect interrogations, phone conversations from jail. They were helped out by two identical twin detectives, who go only by their first names: Dave and Dan. Det. Dan is a retired violent crimes cop and K9 handler. Det. Dave, who is actually a sergeant, spent years working the sex crimes and child abuse beat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Their first season was successful. According to Smith\u2019s complaint, it debuted with 2 million downloads. The project, which released its fourth season in March, has been featured on Today<\/em><\/a>, Dr. Oz<\/a><\/em>, The A.V. Club<\/a><\/em>, Marc Maron\u2019s WTF<\/a><\/em>, and How Success Happens<\/a><\/em>, among others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In April, Smith\u2019s entertainment company, Q and Shu Global Industries, LLC, which operates under the name \u201cPaperclip,\u201d sued Allen\u2019s company, There Was Once A Fern, Inc. In the complaint, Smith alleged that she was the podcast\u2019s sole owner and requested relief from Allen\u2019s \u201cbaseless and unfounded\u201d claims of an equal stake. As Smith saw it, she was the show\u2019s creator. She had contracted Dan and Dave. She had filed the trademark registration and patent application for any TV spin-offs, CDs, DVDs, movies, and also novelty mugs. Allen, Smith wrote, was just a producer. She had worked for the show, but as a contractor, not a corner-office type. Smith claimed she made \u201cgood faith\u201d efforts to negotiate, offering 20 percent of spin-off profits, but that Allen had refused, inventing the title \u201cco-creator.\u201d When those negotiations fell through, Smith alleges, Allen locked her out of the show\u2019s social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “When we launched Small Town Dicks, Zibby’s role in the podcast was approached with the utmost respect and consideration,” a spokesperson for the show wrote, going on to allege that Allen was given a stake in the podcast like all else involved. The spokesperson said Allen remains the only host to be paid so far. “We are disappointed in the series of events leading to the separation and the unwarranted public attacks on the Small Town Dicks team.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Allen, a blonde actress you may recognize from six episodes of Grey\u2019s Anatomy<\/a><\/em> or the Blurryman story of Jordan Peele\u2019s Twilight Zone<\/em><\/a>, has a very different version of events. She lays that out in a counterclaim, filed in July against Smith\u2019s company and 10 unnamed affiliates, identified only as \u201cRoes 1-10.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Allen, she met Smith in 2007, while performing in the movie Waiting For Ophelia<\/em>. Per Allen\u2019s lawyer: \u201cThey became very close, very fast.\u201d Allen\u2019s brother committed suicide their first year of friendship, and Smith was in the midst of a second divorce. They leaned on one another. To commemorate the bond, Smith customized matching necklaces. They featured a brass ball charm to \u201csymbolize their \u2018brass ball\u2019 approach to the hardships of their lives.\u201d Allen called Smith her \u201cbest friend,\u201d at least until this March. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Lawyers for The Simpsons<\/em> actress declined to comment for this article or provide Smith\u2019s response. But social media posts dating back to the late-2000s show the pair together, captioned with nicknames (Smith called Allen \u201cKitty\u201d), heart emoticons, and hashtags like #bestie, #WCW, and #BFF. In one exchange submitted as evidence, posted just weeks before Allen was fired, the Hallmark Channel tweeted at Smith after Allen appeared in a TV-movie, The Story of Us<\/em>. \u201cWe loved having your bestie @Zibby_Allen, @YeardleySmith!\u201d Allen retweeted it with two hearts. In 2009, Smith started writing a blog for the Grameen Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to eliminating world hunger, especially for women in poverty. The digital journal tracked the actress\u2019 travels with the foundation. Each entry of this publicly available diary<\/a> was addressed: \u201cDear Zibby.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In December of 2016, Allen claims that she and Smith met for dinner. That evening, the two discussed a \u201cbroad and unrefined idea for an entertainment project about small town detectives and their investigations,\u201d according to the counterclaim. They discussed the idea over several days, ultimately deciding on a podcast format, which they could expand elsewhere if successful. They allegedly agreed Allen would \u201cmove forward with exploring the details of how to launch, produce and market a podcast.\u201d She claims she spent weeks researching and taking online seminars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most upsetting to Zibby is that Yeardley has deceived the show\u2019s fans by lying to them stating that Zibby left Small Town Dicks to pursue her acting career when the truth is that Yeardley kicked her off the show.<\/p>Bryan Freedman<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n By early 2017, they revisited the plan, agreeing to produce a show \u201ctogether,\u201d the counterclaim says. The ultimate idea was to \u201cscale\u201d the series into a TV show. In the following weeks, Allen claims she performed most of the logistical duties of realizing the show: getting an editor, equipment, software, a website, and an RSS feed. She wrote the show description, negotiated contracts, and formatted files to play across several platforms. They started production that spring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During that time, Allen says she was primarily responsible for \u201ccreating the show\u2019s structure, tone, feel and format, story selection, developing episodic narratives and content, scripting content such as intros, outros, interludes, pickups and announcements.\u201d She also reportedly chose interview subjects, wrote questions, conducted interviews, picked the best tape, scripted the shows from that tape, and edited it all together. Allen did all that for the first three episodes, and then agreed to continue for 42 episodes per year until 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Throughout that time, Allen claims, the two friends were still talking about TV. She also says that, in the fall of 2017, she began taking a small stipend from Paperclip for her production work. The payment, Allen claims, was understood not as her full compensation, but as an advance until the show was in the black. In June of the following year, Allen recalls, they continued the payment conversation. Then, both allegedly entered into an oral agreement. The plan was to pay each of the cop twins, Dave and Dan, 10 percent of the profits after expenses, and then split the remaining 80 percent evenly between Allen and Paperclip. The reason for the split, Allen claims, is that both agreed to be \u201cco-creators.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n