Camila Cabello performed the live debut of her new single “Don’t Go Yet” on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Friday (June 23). But now, the former Fifth Harmony member is defending herself over allegations that one of her backup dancers was wearing “brownface” and trying to pass as a Latino.
On Saturday, Camila defended herself and her team on Twitter.
“This dude was just supposed to be a white man with a terrible spray tan,” she wrote, adding “The expectation was not that everyone in the performance needed to be Latin. So the point wasn’t to make everyone look Latin either.”
“The point was to make each person look like an over the top 80’s character just like in the video,” Camila continued, “Including a white dude with a terrible orange spray tan.”
Watch the performance below. Each of the dancers obviously represents an over-the-top character. Also, it’s silly to think Camila would use brownface on a backup dancer so they look Latin. She’d just…hire a Latin!
Obviously these GenZ kiddos complaining have never seen an episode of Miami Vice.
@Camila_Cabello pic.twitter.com/qARokq0qj7
— camila (@Camila_Cabello) July 24, 2021
The spray tanned backup dancer also spoke out
The spray tanned backup dancer also addressed the issue on social media. A fan took a screenshot from his Instagram stories. He reiterates what Camila said in her message. The look is a bad spray tan.
his explanation pic.twitter.com/hYtgldf5oG
— DONT GO YET IS OUT NOW? (@dorkycamilizers) July 24, 2021
“For people messaging me feeling stressed about this character,” read a message on a photo of the dancer, Dylan Pearce. “He is meant to have a bad fake tan. The makeup artist put light concealer around his eyes to express that.”
“Perhaps it needed to be lighter so it was more pronounced.” He stressed, “This is not blackface. Sorry if it looked like that to anybody but I assure you that was not the vibe.”
A bunch of fans are still mad, though.
There are more tweets at TooFab
look i get what you were trying to do but honestly, there was no need for a character that’s a white dude with a bad spray tan. doing that was clearly not ok and we’d appreciate if u at least used the word sorry.
— ???aadya (@pieceofmarais) July 24, 2021
like y’all clearly didn’t achieve the vibe you wanted, and it never should have been attempted. I don’t personally love your ‘explanation’, but regardless of your intentions, people ARE offended by what you did. You need to apologize and do better.
— bri (@thislovel) July 24, 2021
Camilla is finished..no way around this mess.
— Douglas Izumi (@doug66666) July 25, 2021
