[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]
This Chrissy Teigen situation just got a whole lot more complicated.
Things were pretty cut and dry when the Cravings author was getting canceled for her own terrible tweets. After all, those words were public and indisputable. And when Michael Costello got involved, he seemed to have receipts to back up his story about being bullied and blacklisted by the model. But this situation is actually more of a he-said-she-said situation than it first appeared, and now Maxie James is setting the record straight.
Related: Michael’s Mother Slams ‘Cruel & Evil’ Chrissy As He Says He’s ‘Not Out For Revenge’
As we previously reported, Costello claimed Teigen’s bullying stemmed from screenshots of racial slurs that were “photoshopped” and “proven” false. But fellow designer James refuted his version of events, posting on her own Instagram Story that the Project Runway alum allegedly called her a “Black n***** bitch” to her face during a physical altercation in a fabric store.
Maxie’s IG posts exposing their contentious history led to her explaining exactly what went down between them in a livestream with The Jasmine Brand — and the tale directly connects to his claims about the Lip Sync Battle host. She revealed:
“For Michael Costello, we had an encounter about… seven years ago. So literally the situation that he’s been talking about on the internet, as far as trying to call Chrissy out on her bullying him, that was the exact incident that him and I had gotten into. And she actually was like, defending me when she did say those words to Michael Costello.”
While the designer didn’t condone John Legend‘s wife’s words to Costello, she claimed the star’s anger came “from the racism that he showed me seven years ago.” She claimed:
“It was really, really bad. But it veered from him saying it to me online. Now, he for sure said it online, it was not a photoshop, that is his PR team spinning it around.”
She went on to explain the exact sequence of events of their 2014 feud, noting that she was new to the fashion industry when he targeted her. Maxie recalled:
“He purchased a dress on my website. He then posted the dress the very next day in his showroom with his logo in the background and just like, resold it. My dress was $200 on my website, like $1000 is how much he was selling it for. And I was just so devastated because I was like, just starting.”
She continued:
“I emailed him, no answer. I DM’d him, no answer. So I’m like, my little platform, no one’s gonna believe me, you know, like, I’m new! But I’m like, let me just post it to my little following. At the time I had like 5,000 followers. And I’m like, ‘Let me just post it to my following, at least so my friends and my supporters know that I didn’t steal this from him.’ So, I posted his receipt of him purchasing the dress from me, I posted the picture of him reposting the dress on his Instagram, and I just put my phone down and left. Went to go cry, feel bad for myself, and I just started hearing my phone, like, dinging out of control. … That whole little PicCollage thing went viral.”
According to Maxie, the 38-year-old began attacking her in the comments:
“[He] was going off on people in the comments of the PicCollage that I posted. And that is when he was like, ‘Oh, you’re defending that Black…’ you know, ‘blah blah blah.’ So that’s where it started from.”
After hearing that Costello’s children were allegedly being bullied over the situation, Maxie deleted her post. But the drama didn’t end there:
“So like a year later I go to a fabric store and I see him. I instantly notice him but he did not notice me at first. … I went to go sit down, and the fabric store owner came up to me and was like ‘Oh Maxie, it’s gonna be another 30 minutes until your rolls of fabric are ready.’ So I think once he heard my name is when it registered, like, ‘Oh, that’s her.’ So he comes up to me, I’m like, sitting down, and he comes up to me and he’s like, ‘Oh I remember you. You’re that Black n***** bitch that tried to sabotage my business.’”
OMG! How awful!
She remembered:
“I’m like, ‘Sabotage YOUR business? You stole MY dress.’ And I’m like, ‘Wait, what did you just say to me?’ … And he takes my phone out of my hand and throws it, and it shatters. Oh, I lose my mind. … I’m not really like, the proudest on how I reacted, but I also don’t take it back. … [We] fought — literally, like back in the day like I was in high school. … The police came, and since I had witnesses, the owner of the store gave his statement, he was like ‘Yeah, he definitely abused her first, like verbally, he broke her phone, he definitely called her the n-word, I got all that on video.’”
Maxie declined to press charges because she didn’t want any legal trouble from the fight herself. But Costello didn’t stop there. She shared:
“The next morning I wake up and it’s like a PicCollage of him with bruises and blood. I was like — back then I was like 120 lbs, I’m like, I knew I fought you, but it wasn’t no blood and all of that. Like where did that come from? Then that picture goes viral right, and he hashtags my brand name under all of them. All his fans and everyone’s reposting, ‘Oh, she’s a monster, don’t support her.’ I’m like, bawling, crying, I’m furious.”
She continued:
“And then someone DMs me from his team, like, ‘Oh, first of all, the pictures at the bottom are like, from a bar fight from a year ago. And if you pay attention, his haircuts are different in the photos.’ … I reposted that, and pointed out those pointers. So once that got exposed, and I posted the video also of the store owner contesting to witnessing that, next thing I know, all those pictures that had my brand hashtagged, they were gone.”
So what we’re getting from this is that Costello is actually the one with a prove track record of lying…? Very interesting indeed.
Once again, Maxie deleted her posts against the other designer once he had removed the accusations against her. But when he resurfaced some of the drama in order to target Chrissy years later, she refused to stay silent.
Related: Leona Lewis Defends Chrissy, Claims Michael Bullied Her
While she expressed a hope that his claims of suicidal ideation were him “just being dramatic like he always is,” she pointed out:
“I just felt that it was ironic that seven years later while she’s being bashed and kicked for her past mistakes, and she’s owning up to them and she’s trying to better, here you come with your sob story and you’re playing victim. It’s like, you were the bully of them all, sir. Did you forget? Like, let me remind everyone here.”
She concluded:
“I’m not really into the drama, I’m way too busy to be entertaining that drama. But I definitely did not want people to be defending him for… being bullied, when he’s the biggest bully of them all.”
Well damn! This definitely sheds new light on Costello’s credibility. We do still sympathize with him for any mental health issues he may be dealing with, but it sounds like from Maxie’s side, he may have spun the story in his favor to hide his own racist past. We have to wonder why he would have brought all this up now, if he knew there were alleged receipts of his misdeeds out there?
None of this necessarily excuses Chrissy’s behavior, BTW, but again, in this particular situation things are obviously not as black-and-white as her tweets about Courtney Stodden. It will certainly be interesting to see how this plays out now that Maxie has exposed her side of the story.
Ch-ch-check out the full livestream (below):
[Image via Maxie James/Michael Costello/Instagram & Adriana M. Barraza/WENN]
The post Designer Maxie James Says Michael Costello DID Call Her The N-Word After He Accuses Chrissy Teigen Of Bullying! appeared first on Perez Hilton.
