Editor’s note: This story has been updated with a statement from Ballinger’s attorney to say Ballinger had green paint on her face from a previous skit during the Beyoncé cover.
Colleen Ballinger was already in hot water for alleged inappropriate relationships with her fans. But the hits keep coming for the former “Miranda Sings” YouTuber and Haters Back Off star, who’s had a week filled with more accusations.
On Wednesday, one of Ballinger’s unlisted YouTube videos from 2018 resurfaced, in which she performed a cover of Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” in face paint. Several Twitter users circulated the clip, accusing her of using blackface in the video. But according to Andrew Brettler, an attorney for Ballinger, the face paint was actually green.
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“What you don’t see in the clip that was posted online is that Colleen was performing a song from Wicked with Oliver Tompsett, a star from the show,” Brettler said in a statement to The Daily Beast accompanied by a clip of the Wicked performance. “She painted her face green like the witch. After that number, she went right into Single Ladies (while still wearing the green makeup). At that time, she closed all her shows with that Beyoncé number—it was one of her most popular bits.”
The timing for such a controversy couldn’t be worse for Ballinger. It came just a week after Ballinger posted an apology video for earlier accusations of bullying and harassment—ukulele in hand.
“Waiting for the ukulele apology for this one,” one YouTube commenter wrote Wednesday under the unlisted video.
Additionally, she was accused just days ago of using the N-word on the set of her Netflix show Haters Back Off.
April Korto Quioh, a former employee on the show, acknowledged Ballinger’s “remarkable” lack of boundaries and racial insensitivity in an article posted to her blog apologizetome.com.
“I recall overhearing her once brag that a creator was being ‘cancelled’ for saying the n-word (and if you think she went with ‘n-word’ instead of hitting that hard ‘r’ then you haven’t been paying attention) and that she would never be stupid enough to get caught doing something like that,” Quioh wrote.
Quioh also recalled Ballinger’s alleged “insistence” that “limited POC background actors” were used in the show, calling their presence “distracting” given it taking place in Washington State.
“I took note as Colleen was shown an Asian food market that would be re-dressed as a bodega for the show and watched her disgust as she demanded assurance that all the ‘Asian shit’ would be removed before filming,” Quioh wrote.
It’s not the first time Ballinger has faced accusations of racial insensitivity. She apologized in 2020 for a since-deleted older video in which she and her sister impersonated Latina women in a skit that, even Ballinger admitted, was “completely based in racial stereotypes.”
“Racial stereotypes are not funny, they’re not a joke, and they should never be joked about,” Ballinger said at the time.
Ballinger herself hasn’t commented on the latest accusations of racism.
