Jenna Marbles and her partner end their podcast after racist videos resurface
After a nationwide reckoning that held many powerful figures and entertainers to task for racism for the first time, old racist videos from the popular vlogger Jenna Marbles resurfaced. Marbles, real name Jenna Mourey, left YouTube in the wake of this controversy. Now, Marbles and her partner Julien Solomita have ended their podcast after six years. The Jenna & Julien Podcast released its last episode on Monday, aptly titled “The Final Podcast.”
The pair was elusive in their reasoning — they don’t specifically mention Mourey’s racist videos — but its somber tone is of a piece with their retreat from public life. Mourey and Solomita both took a break from their YouTube channels, with Mourey bowing out of the podcast for its previous five episodes. They both thanked fans for their support over the years, and Mourey assured that she’s in a sturdy place after stepping away (per Insider):
"If I think about it too much and if I say it too much, I'm probably gonna cry. And I can't really look at Julien because I'm probably gonna cry. But I wanted to say thank you so much for all of your support over however many years we've been doing this," she said. "This is, like, one of the sources of so much happiness and laughter and joy — and such a good time — and I'm so glad that so many of you had such a good time with us.
I have a million things that I would love to say, but I just want you to know that I'm doing okay, I'm getting help, and I'm just being a person right now," she said. "So I genuinely appreciate all the support and love."
Back in June, fans asked Mourey to address a number of racist videos. One of these featured her wearing blackface to impersonate Nicki Minaj. Other videos found her firing off a rap song with racist lyrics (“Hey Ching Chong Wing Wong, shake your King Kong ding dong/ Sorry that was racist, I'm bad at rap songs”) and shaming women who “slept around.”
Before wiping the channel of past offensive content, Mourey posted an apology which disowned her past racist content as “inexcusable” and asserted that she didn’t intend to don blackface. “It was not my intention to do blackface," she said. "I do want to tell you how unbelievably sorry I am if I ever offended you by posting this video or by doing this impression, and that that was never my intention. It's not okay. It's shameful. It's awful. I wish it wasn't part of my past.” The apology video, along with old insensitive videos, has also been set to private.
