After a week of teasing some kind of return on Twitter, Tati Westbrook has released a new video explaining her side of the story in the YouTube beauty community’s infamous Dramageddon feud. According to her, she was “weaponised” and fed “poisonous lies” about James Charles by fellow makeup mogul Jeffree Star and Shane Dawson.
The video—aptly called “Breaking My Silence”—marks the first time in a year since the 38-year-old beauty influencer spoke her truth with a video “exposing” James Charles’s alleged past called “Bye Sister.” Westbrook opens the video with a warning that “on the advice of my attorneys, I cannot share with all of you right now the evidence that we have accumulated of the events that have occurred,” but admits that she thinks Star and Dawson “were both bitterly jealous of James Charles’s success,” and orchestrated the whole feud.
“Jeffree [Star] resented that so much of his business was centred around his biggest rival and Shane [Dawson] did not like that James Charles wanted to make a documentary,” she said. “Neither of them were happy with standing in his shadow on YouTube anymore.”
“I believe James Charles was gaining more followers and receiving more views and more press faster than anyone in the history on the platform and it’s also my opinion that Jeffrey and Shane needed James marginalised and out of the way for their November launch of the conspiracy palette along with Shane’s merch,” Westbrook continued. “I’ve also recently been informed that Jeffree is allegedly a co-owner of Morphe. Before the scandal occurred, I had also been told that James Charles was about to develop an entire cosmetics line with the owners of Morphe.”
“The entire situation opens up a Pandora’s box of speculation but I’m just not sure anyone counted on this drama spreading like wildfire. It’s my opinion that everyone involved got scared and their plan changed multiple times as I refused to play along or engage with the drama over the next several months a year later.”
“It is now my opinion that James Charles was not their only intended target. I believe that there are many different people who have unclean hands in all of this and there was a coordinated plan to keep me quiet and pushed me out of the way for other business reasons.”
Minutes after the video was published, Dawson went on Instagram Live to document his reaction. As an excerpt of the video below shows, he allegedly laughed at Westbrook’s claim that she was a victim of abuse, called her “manipulative” and accused her of fake crying. By contrast, Dawson has yet to acknowledge Jada Pinkett Smith’s and Jaden Smith’s response to a disturbing clip resurfacing online of the YouTube star allegedly pretending to masturbate to a poster of Willow Smith when she was 11 years old.
Yesterday, Shane Dawson apologised for his offensive past, including performing and normalising Blackface, making harmful and insensitive references to child abuse, using the n-word and promoting negative racist stereotypes of Black people, after announcing he was “done with the beauty world.” Last month, Jeffree Star addressed a photo of him with a “Nazi lipstick” that resurfaced online.
You can watch Tati Westbrook’s full video below.
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