In May 10, 2019, the YouTube beauty community was forever changed when Tati Westbrook released a 40-minute video that slammed James Charles for allegedly manipulating straight men, spreading rumors and straight-up being a bad friend. Now, six months after the scandal ended, the 20-year-old makeup mogul opened up about the entire public feud.

On Tuesday, November 26, PAPER Magazine released an exclusive interview with the YouTube star and he didn’t hold anything back when it came to talking about his mental health after the situation with Tati.

“I’m not mentally in a place where I want to be,” he revealed. “What’s even harder to swallow is that it’s been six months since all the drama happened. I thought by this time I’d be completely good — back to normal, if you will — and that’s not the case.”

That’s not all! He even got real about the internet’s obsession with “cancel culture” and shared the most important lesson he learned after being “cancelled.”

“We’re quickly getting to a point where cyberbullying, hating and cancel culture is getting stronger. I can say firsthand, they got to me. I was so grateful to be surrounded by close friends and family that were checking on me all day long, every single day, in the middle of the night, every 10 minutes to make sure I didn’t do something that I could never take back,” he said. “I could’ve easily continued to fuel the fire and thrown back a million other accusations. We chose to keep it to the facts and really work on addressing the issues at hand with my fanbase that I knew I needed to clear up, rather than just creating more fight. Everybody was just gonna go down. The online community, especially in the beauty space, is already suffering a lot in terms of drama. The last thing I wanted to do was add to that.”

As fans know, another part of Tati’s accusations surrounded a relationship with one of the waiters from her birthday party, Sam Cooke. After that fling, James revealed that he’s more cautious of jumping into a relationship and that he tries to identify red flags before dating someone new.

“I’ve gotten really good at seeing those early on,” he says. “You just never know what people’s true intentions are. With my job, there are so many blessings but a lot of people see them as an opportunity for themselves to either come up, get financial gain, get followers or attention or take me down with them, which has been attempted. I’m just careful…and lonely.”

The makeup artist even thanked his fans and supporters who stuck by him through his rough year.

“I feel like my followers, hopefully at this point, are here because they love me,” he said.

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