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Since the first week of May 2025, TikTok users have mass-unfollowed American influencer, actor and makeup artist James Charles, who has over 40 million followers on the platform.
This comes in the wake of Charles facing allegations last month that he was in a romantic relationship with fellow content creator Evan Johnson despite recent domestic abuse charges against the latter.
TikToker Mikaela Testa, in her viral video on April 30, 2025, claimed:
“Just letting everyone in Australia know that James Charles is sleeping with Evan Johnson – the one who broke Kayla’s jaw and badly beat and bruised her. The one who was in prison. James Charles has been housing this motherf**ker to sleep with him.”
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Since that video, James Charles has reportedly lost over 700,000 followers on TikTok, according to SocialBlade. However, Dexerto has reported that his YouTube, which has over 24 million subscribers, remains unaffected.
Notably, Johnson was arrested and charged with domestic assault and violation of probation in Sumner County, Tennessee, on April 7, 2025. That was just days after his former girlfriend and TikToker Kayla Malec claimed in a two-hour-long YouTube video that she’d been in an “extremely abusive relationship” for the previous nine months.
While police did not publicly name Johnson’s accuser, and Kayla initially didn’t identify her abuser, it was later confirmed that she was named as a victim in the court documents, as reviewed by PEOPLE.
Evan is currently out on bail and is set to appear for a court hearing on May 7, 2025, where Kayla Malec is also scheduled to attend.
More about the allegations against James Charles
Along with Mikaela Testa, influencer Zach Sellers also made claims against James Charles. In a May episode of the Bee Better podcast, Zach, a former close friend of James, said that James and Evan were in a romantic relationship.
In the episode titled “Investigating James Charles,” Sellers claimed he saw flirty text exchanges between Evan Johnson and the Instant Influencer star, adding that they were in constant communication.
Zach Sellers also alleged that James was trying to “look pretty for Evan” in the “shirtless” pictures that he sent him, and that he referred to Johnson as “daddy.”
Meanwhile, late last month, Kayla Malec appeared on the Bangin’ Out podcast and shared how one of her close friends “f**ked her over” in ways she couldn’t have imagined. She added that she had proofs and receipts of the betrayal, and that the friend admitted it to her upon being confronted.
However, Malec abstained from naming the friend or providing further details, presumably due to the pending court case involving her ex. Following these claims, rumors started circulating online that James Charles had reportedly paid Evan Johnson’s bail.
Additionally, conspiracy theories emerged online that he had been flying out Evan and having a sexual relationship with him, in exchange for money and gifts.
James Charles was at the center of two separate controversies earlier. In 2019, he was accused of disloyalty and seduction by a fellow makeup artist and influencer, Tati Westbrook. When Jeffree Star and Zara Larsson corroborated the claims, Charles ended up losing 1 million subscribers on YouTube in less than a day.
James posted an apology video, which was eventually taken down, but followed that up with another clip where he refuted the accusations. Subsequently, Westbrook claimed he was manipulated into making the original video.
In early 2021, two underage boys, including Isaiyah, accused James Charles of grooming, claiming the YouTuber sent them explicit images of himself and coerced them into sexting.
While Charles admitted to sending the sexually suggestive photos and messages to the boys, he claimed to not know they were underage. Following this, James’ YouTube channel was temporarily demonetized but later reinstated.
During a July 2023 interview with Cosmopolitan, James Charles refuted the grooming allegations and claimed the texts and images used as evidence against him were fake.
Exploring the Evan Johnson and Kayla Malec controversy
On April 4, 2025, Kayla Malec, 20, released a YouTube video series titled “He doesn’t love you,” where she claimed she had been “silently” abused for months by her ex-boyfriend, Evan. She also mentioned leaving him in late January.
Three days later, Evan Johnson, 20, was booked on domestic assault and probation violation charges. However, he made bail on the same day.
In the wake of this turn of events, social media united to support Kayla Malec.
On April 25, 2025, she took to her TikTok and shared “behind-the-scenes details” with her followers. She confirmed that the court hearing was in less than two weeks, calling it “really exciting” yet “really nerve-wracking.”
Malec mentioned being depressed and anxious, but added that it was part of her healing process. There has been no public response from Evan Johnson to the allegations against him yet.
