Following her announcement that she was stepping away from her YouTube channel, Jenna Mourey, a.k.a. Jenna Marbles, and her longtime partner, Julien Solomita, announced on Monday that they are officially ending the Jenna and Julien Podcast. The couple dropped the final episode, a six-minute heartfelt good-bye thanking their listeners and sponsors for all the support over the years and 300 episodes. “I haven’t been on the internet for a while,” Mourey says in the beginning of the clip. It’s the first we’ve heard from her since she posted — and has since deleted — another tearful good-bye on her main YouTube channel.
“Maybe someday in the future Julien and I can do something else … For now the podcast is good-bye,” she explains. The couple says it was important for them to say farewell to their fandom — Dink Fam, this was for you — rather than just abruptly end the podcast without any acknowledgment. (Solomita had continued recording episode sans Mourey this summer. Those will also be no more, though he will continue to stream regularly on Twitch.) “I just want you to know I’m doing okay,” Mourey adds. “I’m getting help, and I’m just being a person right now.” In the background, you can hear Kermit, the couple’s dog, whining, clearly trying to convey something to listeners in secret Italian greyhound language, which seems as good a way as any to close out the podcast.
At the end of June, Mourey declared she was done with her channel and its 23 million subscribers. As Black Lives Matter protests ramped up around the country, Mourey opted to highlight several old, racist videos, including one where she wore blackface while doing an impression of Nicki Minaj and another where she used a slur to mock an Asian man. Both had already been deleted prior to her good-bye video, but she explained that she felt it was important to recognize them and be direct in her apology. “It was not my intention to do blackface … but all that matters is that people were offended and it hurt them,” she said in the video. “This isn’t okay, and it hasn’t existed on the internet, because it isn’t okay. I haven’t done anything remotely like that, because I heard people say ‘this is blackface’ and ‘I don’t like that.”’ Mourey said she was stepping away because she didn’t want to put anything into the world that could potentially hurt someone. “There’s no on-demanding an apology of me for that video right now, but put it on my tab,” Mourey joked. She has not posted since.
