Here comes the truth!
(Or really just one person’s experience).
An extra who appeared in Kanye West‘s Yeezy Season 3 show in New York Thursday has opened up about the entire surreal experience to Jezebel.
Related: Kanye Drops New Song
According to this young woman, the process was strange and exhausting, and although she doesn’t regret it, she wouldn’t do it again, either.
Beginning at 8 a.m., she and hundreds of other young people were bussed from New York to New Jersey to get dressed, before being brought back to Madison Square Garden, and were paid $100 for 10 hours of work.
Read on for HIGHlights from her tale (below)!
The extra explains how she felt like cattle being herded about:
“It was like a really big assembly line. It was literally like a factory. You go through, you get your outfit, go to the shoe section and get your shoes, go to the hat section and get your hat. Put it on, take your picture, go out, get on the bus again.”
The extras also didn’t wear any pieces designed by Yeezy himself:
“I think a misconception was that the clothes the extras were wearing were from the Yeezy collection. All the shoes were Adidas, but the clothes were thrift store finds that I think they dyed to be the same color scheme. “When I first got to the warehouse, I was like, how in the world did he produce all of these pieces. Then I realized they weren’t his label. The models that were wearing his designs were all on the platform, but they were also mixed in with some of the extras.”
That’s misleading!
The anonymous extra recalls feeling strange about the whole experience:
“On the bus driving back to the Garden, there was a moment when I was like, I don’t want to do this anymore. I feel like I’m headed to a concentration camp. It feels odd. I don’t know anybody. It was a weird feeling.”
They were fed Subway and generally not fussed over:
“We went back, they gave us sandwiches├óΓé¼ΓÇ¥Subway├óΓé¼ΓÇ¥and we were instructed to wait in the arena for hair and makeup. This is the best part. Hair and makeup consisted of the choice between lotion or coconut oil. And hair was pretty much just making sure your hair wasn’t too style or adding a head scarf. Extremely minimalist.”
Which makes some sense because…
The entire tableau was supposed to mimic a Rwandan refugee camp:
“And it turns out, one of our instructions was that the theme was channeling a Rwandan refugee camp. We were Rwandan refugees. At this point, my mind was so blown. I was exhausted. I had been standing around for hours. I was honestly over it. I was like, I literally cannot believe Kanye has us out here dressed like refugees on this stage and we’re supposed to look sad and angry.”
Totally sounds like something Kanye would do, actually.
As you can imagine, standing around for over an hour was not fun times:
“I found myself sort of moving to the music and I had to stop. After a while when we realized he’s not just playing a couple songs, he’s about to go into a major rant, he’s gonna show his mother’s video twice, this is gonna be a long day, we started moving around. We were instructed to be statues, but there was a point where I shifted my weight and turned to get a different viewpoint. You start getting dizzy from standing there and staring at one point for so long. We were probably standing for like an hour and a half.”
We’re tired just thinking about it!
At the end, she was really over it:
“It took almost an hour to get everybody wrangled together to turn in our looks and get our phones back. That whole process was when I really started to go crazy, sitting in this auditorium waiting for my number to be called. There was a point where I was like, ‘Fuck Kanye for this.'”
LOLz.
Read about the entire grueling experience HERE!
[Image via Tidal]