Beauty YouTuber Jeffree Star wades into feud between James Charles and Tati Westbrook

James Charles has lost approxiemately 2.6m subscribers

Beauty guru Jeffree Star has become the latest celebrity to wade in on the ongoing YouTube battle between James Charles and Tati Westbrook.

The feud between Charles and Westbrook, who were previously close friends, began in April when Charles promoted Sugar Bear Hair Vitamins – a rival brand to Halo Beauty, Westbrook's own brand of beauty supplements – on Instagram during the first weekend of Coachella.

Following the post, Westbrook posted a clip on Instagram saying she felt “lost” and “betrayed” by an unnamed person, before unfollowing the 19-year-old YouTuber on social media.

The controversy escalated this weekend after Westbrook posted a 45-minute long video about the feud from her perspective in which she accused Charles of “manipulating people’s sexuality”.

In the video, which was titled “Bye Sister”, Westbrook revealed that while Charles' video for Sugar Bear Hair did spark the fight, she had also become tired of apologising for his behaviour — which she alleged included everything from saying mean things about other beauty influencers to sexually harassing men and using his "fame, power and money to play with people's emotions".

Since Westbrook posted the video on her YouTube account, her subscriber count has escalated from four to nine million.

In comparison, Charles has lost approximately 2.6m subscribers. Before the duo’s feud went public, Charles had a total of 16.5m YouTube subscribers, but according to social media statistics tracker SocialBlade, the figure now sits at 13.9m.

It was this fall and rise in subscriber count that prompted fellow YouTuber Star to wade in on the ongoing feud and make it clear where his loyalties lie.

After Westbrook reached seven million subscribers on YouTube over the weekend, Star shared his congratulations on the achievement with a tweet that read: “HUGE congratulations to the makeup queen @GlamLifeGuru on hitting 6 MILLION subscribers on YouTube today!!! You are one of a kind.”

Star later posted a photo of himself alongside the caption “unbothered” before joking that YouTube’s beauty community was “burning to the ground”.

As Westbrook’s subscriber count continued to rise, Star shared another tweet saying: “OOPS, I must have been high yesterday.. Sorry, @GlamLifeGuru! HUGE CONGRATULATIONS on hitting 8 MILLION subscribers!!!!"

Star also hit out at Charles’ younger brother, Ian Jeffrey, after he posted a tweet defending his sibling.

In the now deleted post, Star wrote: “Why is your brother a predator?? Why’d you really move back to NYC? Exactly. Shut the f*** up.”

Star has also unfollowed Charles on Twitter and Instagram and he’s not the only celebrity to do so.

According to reports, Kylie Jenner, Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry have also unfollowed the beauty YouTuber on social media.

In 2018, Jenner joined Charles for a video on his channel in which he perfected a “sister skeleton” look on the reality star.

On Saturday afternoon, Charles – who is estimated to be worth $12m (£9m) – posted an eight-minute response video titled “Tati,” which so far has had over 32m views.

In the video, Charles delivered an apology to Westbrook and her husband about the way he spoke about other people on social media.

The 19-year-old admitted he had previously “acted out of impulse" and "played the victim" before adding: "I’m not doing that today, I’m not. That is all I have to say, I’m sorry.”

While Charles has apologised for some of his behaviour, he is yet to address the allegations of sexual harassment made by Westbrook.