I was going to start this article off saying, “Hi sisters!” But I think that phrase may be canceled now.
After the massive social media firestorm around James Charles’ career, many people have come forward with alleged receipts related to the scandal between he and former friend, Tati Westbrook.
RELATED STORIES
From apparent proof that he hits on straight men to some more insidious behavior, here’s a roundup of what’s out there right now.
A primer: Tati vs James
In case you’re wondering what happened between Tati and James to cause drama so big that it’s made it onto CNN, here’s the tea:
On May 10th, beauty YouTuber Tati Westbrook uploaded a video titled, “BYE, SISTER…”
The “sister,” of course, is James Charles. That word is kind of his signature.
Tati laid James out
In the video, Tati revealed how heartbroken she was about James agreeing to advertise Sugarbearhair sleep gummies.
Sugarbearhair is a direct competitor of Tati’s own beauty supplement company, Halo Beauty.
Since James and Tati are friends, she felt that him working for her rival was a betrayal.
She took James under her wing when he was a teenager
She mentioned having never appeared on James’ own channel (which she hasn’t), and helping him with his own career when he was first starting out (which she did).
In fact, it’s clear that James owes a lot of where his career is now to Tati.
She began mentoring him when he was a teenager.
And then she spilled tea all over the place
The allegation with the biggest impact was this:
“Oh my god, you tried to trick a straight man into thinking he’s gay, yet again, and somehow, you’re the victim.
You know, it’s really disgusting to manipulate someone’s sexuality, especially when they are still, you know, emerging into adulthood.”
Turns out, James apparently likes to chase straight men
And there’s a lot of evidence to prove Tati right.
So many people have come out of the woodwork to confirm Tati’s accusations that it’s hard to keep track at this point.
Grant Landis was one of the first to speak up
On his Twitter, he posted multiple screenshots of James DM-ing him to hit on him.
Let’s take a look, shall we?
It looks like Grant was interested in meeting James as a friend, and James was not looking for that type of relationship from him.
“Straight boys have no game.” Um?
James hit on multiple straight men
This thread shows all the times James tried to shoot his shot with Sebastian Javier.
These demonstrate that this is definitely a pattern with James — if they’re real, of course.
The big one: Sam, the waiter from Seattle
Tati brought up her birthday dinner in Seattle, where she believed that James acted inappropriately to the waiter they had there.
Sam wasn’t sure if he was into James
Which James didn’t take very well.
Sexuality is a hard thing to figure out, especially as a teenager. It looks like James must have forgotten that, though.
This wasn’t the end of their interactions.
James was not happy
This is where a lot of the anger at James comes from.
Should these screencaps turn out to be 100% legit, then this looks very bad for James indeed.
No one gets to tell you about your sexuality. Ever.
Well, the waiter wound up making his own YouTube video about the situation, and he shared his alleged DMs in it.
The video is WILD and totally worth a watch.
Jeffree Star also had some things to say
In a since-deleted tweet, beauty mogul and former friend of James, Jeffree Star, went after Ian Jeffrey.
Jeffree wasn’t done
Since we now apparently know what happened the night of Tati’s birthday, this tweet is a little confusing.
Ian is James’ brother.
We have yet to find out what Jeffree is referring to here, but odds are the truth will come out at some point.
Jeffree threatened to show some major proof.
He never followed through, deleting this tweet and allegedly thousands of others. He then released a video saying he wasn’t going to get involved with drama anymore. Yawn…
Given Jeffree’s past scandals, it seems like it would take more than James hitting on a waiter to upset him.
Especially since James and Sam’s DMs didn’t come out until now.
What are we missing?
An anonymous influencer spoke up
Still early in the scandal, an influencer who wished to remain anonymous contacted TeaSpill, a popular YouTube channel dedicated to reporting on beauty community drama.
In the statement they gave, they said James was super rude to them during an interaction at Coachella.
Of course, since it’s unverifiable, take it with a grain of salt.
TeaSpill talked to James directly
As you can see, James reportedly claimed that Sugarbearhair heard about him getting “mobbed” at Coachella and reached out.
Unfortunately for James, one of his own friends would inadvertently prove that to be a lie.
Nikita Dragun accidentally exposed a lie
These texts actually prove he knowingly chose to reach out to Tati’s competitor via Nikita.
Nikita, who is a friend of James’, posted them to try and prove that he had no prior promotional arrangements with Sugarbearhair.
Needless to say this backfired. Hard.
Tati posted another video titled “Why I Did It…”
In it, Tati explained why she made her initial video and goes into detail about the struggle it has been for her to deal with the drama and backlash towards James.
James released some screenshots of his own in a video called NO MORE LIES.
In the video he has the receipts that he tried to contact Tati and Jeffree multiple times, that his conversations with the waiter were more two-sided than they seemed, and that Jeffree was incredibly hostile towards him. Who to believe?!
For now, I guess we just wait for more TEA! TO! BE! SPILLED!
What do you think of all this drama? Let us know in the comments below!
