Glambot director faces racism allegations over leaked emails

For years, Cole Walliser’s Glambot has been Hollywood’s favourite toy — celebrities lining up to be spun, slowed, and sanctified in ultra-glossy slow motion. It’s red carpet ASMR. Blink and you miss it. Or rather, blink and you don’t — because the Glambot never does.

Cole Walliser’s Glambot faces scrutiny over leaked email row

But a leaked 2019 email exchange between Cole Walliser and Yinka Animashaun, a woman if colour enquiring about booking the Glambot for her wedding, has detonated across social media. The charge is racism, or at least something adjacent: elitism, condescension, etc.

In the emails, Cole reportedly responds with a tone that many have described as curt and patronising — stressing that the Glambot is “not cheap,” floating an absurdly wide price range (anywhere from five figures to one million dollars), and suggesting the enquiry wasn’t serious because Yinka didn’t specify a budget.

Yinka later spoke about how the exchange made her feel dismissed, belittled, and stereotyped. As a woman of colour, she said the assumption that she was “pretending” to book landed with extra weight. That framing flipped the entire narrative.

The backlash also arrives at a deliciously ironic moment. Cole has been enjoying renewed visibility thanks to viral Glambot clips from awards season with celebrities fawning over him, hugging him, thanking him for making them look iconic. One minute, you’re Hollywood’s favourite hype man. Next, you’re being ratioed for a six-year-old email.

This isn’t about weddings or price points. It’s about how proximity to celebrity warps basic decency. It’s about who gets softness in professional exchanges and who gets talked down to. And it’s about the myth that being brilliant at what you do gives you a free pass to be unpleasant while doing it.

The Glambot will survive. Hollywood always does. But the slow-motion machine has briefly turned on its creator, and the image it’s captured isn’t flattering,  because no lighting trick can fix that.

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