Camila Cabello is defending a decision to darken the skin of one of her backup dancers.
The singer was criticized on social media after her performance of “Don’t Go Yet” aired on Friday’s episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. Dylan Pearce, a white male dancer, appeared with heavy stage makeup, leading to accusations of racism.
“So this dude was just supposed to be a white man with a terrible spray tan,” Cabello explained in a note she shared Saturday on Twitter. “We purposefully tried to pull together a multicultural group of performers, the expectation was not that everyone in the performance needed to be Latin.
“There are white people, African American people, latin people, etc. and so the point wasn't to try to make everyone look Latin either. There are a lot of people in the performance who are not.”
Cabello said the intention was for the dancers to look “like an over the top 80s character just like in the video, including a white dude with a terrible orange spray tan.”
Cabello released "Don't Go Yet," the first single from her forthcoming album Familia, on Friday.