When a breakup occurs between two content creators, the ensuing drama is almost guaranteed to play out online and in public. The former couple has broadcasted their relationship to fans, giving audiences the sense that they’re along for the ride. So when it ends, the creators feel obligated to keep them posted—as seen in David Dobrik and Liza Koshy’s tearful breakup video. Or, if one party has felt slighted, they’ll call out the other person on their platform. A recent fallout between two popular creators, singer Clinton Kane and YouTuber and podcast host Brook Schofield is drawing attention as Schofield calls Kane out for a series of dramatic lies.
Schofield is best known for co-hosting Cancelled with YouTuber Tana Mongeau, a podcast known for the hosts’ stark honesty and directly addressing bad actors in the influencer community. In an episode posted July 10, Schofield said Kane, who she dated for three months, lied about his mother and brother being dead and faked his Australian accent, among other fabrications.
Kane responded to her claims in a series of videos posted Saturday, prompting both sides to argue about the details of their relationship over multiple TikToks that received millions of views, as onlookers tuned in to see each creator defend their side.
Here’s everything to know about the drama between Clinton Kane and Brooke Schofield.
Clinton Kane instigates the drama with a TikTok
Kane uploaded a TikTok on June 24 to promote his new song, and the text on the video says, “When you’ve been over the relationship for two years, but she won’t stop yapping,” referring to Schofield talking about her ex-boyfriend on podcasts in recent months. His video quickly racked up over 7.3 million views.
In response, Schofield posted a series of videos about what she says are Kane’s many lies to her. In the first video, she’s seen in a robe listening to his song and the caption reads, “The rage bait is working please stream this song all proceeds go to his mom.”
Schofield's caption refers to Kane saying during a July 2022 interview with Zach Sang that his mother, brother, and father all died within the same year and that one of his songs was about losing his mom. In April 2023, Sang invited Schofield's co-host, Tana Mongeau, on his show to talk about Cancelled. During their conversation, Sang claimed that Kane had lied about his mom’s death. Mongeau corroborated the claim, saying that Kane had uploaded an Instagram post at the time, in which he said that he wasn’t talking about his actual mother, but a person who had passed away who was a "mother figure" to him.
Kane's initial video prompted Schofield to put out a 16-part video series on June 26, which has gained over 121.4 million views. In the videos, she breaks down every major moment in their relationship, from their meeting for the first time to their breakup.
Schofield’s response to Kane
In the series, Schofield runs through a list of lies Kane told her and his followers over the years. They met because she was a fan of his, she says, and he invited her to a show where they met, hung out, and began their relationship.
They started dating at the height of COVID and quarantined together, but she says red flags began to crop up as she tried to go home, get new clothes, and reset after spending so much time with him. She says he started feeling insecure and asked if he could go with her.
Schofield also says that he lied about his age after they went on a trip together and handed over his license, only to reveal he was two years younger than he told her. She says they had fights that were seemingly prompted by nothing. “It became a situation where I was mothering this man, and if I did anything wrong… he went ballistic because he was an infant baby child,” she says in the video. “It was way too much for me to handle.”
She adds that she overheard a conversation between him and his manager asking them to get the Zach Sang interview taken down. When she watched the video, she read several comments accusing him of lying about the death of his mother and confronting him about the lie.
“He made me feel so f-cking horrible for ever possibly accusing him of lying about something like that,” she says in a video. “I felt so disgusting and so guilty. I thought I was going crazy.”
Then, she found out that he was cheating on her with multiple people and they broke up. Though she confronted him again about lying about his mother’s death, Kane maintained that he was telling the truth. Schofield then told him that she had been in contact with his mom (which was not true) and says that’s when he admitted he had lied, though he maintained that he was not lying about his mother’s death. Kane did not immediately respond to a request for comment. According to a statement Kane’s team sent to Rolling Stone, the person he was referring to in the clip was “a very special mother-like figure in his teenage years, who sadly passed.”
“Clinton regrets the way this devastating news was communicated at the time,” reads the statement. “Clinton genuinely felt that he had lost an irreplaceable mother figure. Clinton was and largely is estranged from his immediate family.”
“The public rehashing of these details is only an attempt to bring attention and focus on Brooke’s podcast at the expense of tearing down another former boyfriend—a tactic she’s become known for.”
On July 10, Schofield and Mongeau spoke about the situation on Cancelled. Schofield shared that she was upset with Sang for appearing to take advantage of their close friendship to be the first one to break the news about Kane lying about the death of his mother.
According to Schofield, she tried to bury the story so no one would find out about the situation with her ex-boyfriend. After Mongeau’s interview with Sang, Schofield messaged him to request that he not air the part of the conversation about Kane’s lies because she wasn’t prepared for it to come out. Sang aired the episode with that discussion included.
Schofield says a few months later, she was invited to do an interview with Sang that never aired. That interview, Schofield says, was supposed to be about her but the questions she received were about "only Clinton Kane."
Kane puts out his own 30-part TikTok video series
Kane shared his side of the story on Saturday with a multi-part video series on TikTok where he turned off the comments on all the videos. He sits solemnly in what seems like a hotel room to run through every point Schofield makes in her videos and provide his side of the story. In it, he points out some inconsistencies with Brooke’s story of their relationship, including the length of their time together and the exact day they made their relationship official.
He also addressed the Zach Sang interview in a video, saying, “There was a belief in my heart that no one would get it or understand. And when people would ask, like, ‘Why are you so upset? Who passed away?’ I just started telling them that it was my mom. Because my mom was absent for most of my life and, in some crazy way, it just sort of fit that she was the one who passed away. This is awful, I know.”
He goes on to say that he had “shame about this motherly figure” and his mother. “I was a punk kid who gave a dumb answer on a podcast when he was working with anxiety disorder and had no business being on it until he was good with all the feelings that he was having,” he says.
He also addressed the confusion over his accent in one of the many videos uploaded on Saturday. He explains that he was born in the Philippines and then moved around a lot growing up. His ambiguous accent is a result of that, Kane says. "At 19-years-old, when I moved to America for music, my record label and team needed one place to say where I was from,” he says in the video. “Since I did not live in the Philippines as a child, I chose Australia, because, honestly, it was just a beautiful memory, and that’s where I spent my formative years. I adopted just saying I was from Australia, because I didn’t want to list all 10 places that I’ve lived in and tell my life story every time I would make small talk with a stranger.”
The aftermath of Kane’s videos
Kane’s videos met some backlash from viewers, as many noted he was making an argument over semantics rather than taking accountability for misleading people.
Schofield then posted a second set of videos, which accumulated over 39.8 million views, addressing his most recent videos and offering her opinions on them. Schofield did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The drama has prompted other TikTok creators to offer their takes. Tefi Pessoa, a popular TikToker and friend of Schofield, addressed Kane directly in a video.
“I think people want to understand why you’re digging your heels in. It’s because the hole is too deep. You are in over your head,” she says in the video. “These little nitpicky things you do are scaring me because you’re starting to believe it now."
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Write to Moises Mendez II at moises.mendez@time.com