What Really Happened To Tila Tequila?

Thien Thanh Thi Nguyen, better known as Tila Tequila, was one of the most notable reality TV stars of the 2000s. She emerged with some force on early social media outlet Myspace, racking up tens of millions of views at a time when such numbers were considered to be ludicrous. Tequila leveraged that fame into an MTV dating series, as was the style at the time. That show, "A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila," saw 16 men and 16 women compete for her affection and prominently depicted Tequila's bisexuality for a unique angle. It ran for two seasons and performed exceptionally well among key demographics. She was on top of the world, but unfortunately, Tequila's star couldn't rise forever.

Tequila was a musician, model, and one of the first social-media stars, but she isn't as prominent as she used to be. After "A Shot at Love" replaced Tequila in 2008, the one-time queen of MySpace slowly faded into obscurity. Though she doesn't grace our TV screens very often anymore, Tequila didn't simply disappear. In fact, Tequila fits comfortably into the long list of reality TV stars who ruined their own careers. All the shocking scandals, bizarre revelations, and unforgivable decisions tell the tragic tale of what really happened to Tila Tequila. 

Tila Tequila is a stage name, but it's far from the only one the star has used. In 2010, Tequila partnered with a PR firm called Big Machine Media and started publicly identifying as Miss Tila. Under that new name, she released her second album, "Welcome to the Darkside," which is technically an EP with only three songs, and most of her work came to the internet in scattered singles. "Welcome to the Darkside" was supposed to be a reinvention of Tequila's sound and a departure from her 2007 debut, "Sex." In practice, the EP did little to elevate her station with music critics.

"Welcome to the Darkside" contains three songs, two of which are covers, and the lion's share of reviews note her bizarre choice of songs. Tequila selected Depeche Mode's "Blue Dress" and Yoko Ono's "Walking On Thin Ice," with an original track called "Get Me Off" to break things up. Despite two of the songs having some pedigree behind them, Tequila's versions earned little praise in the media. The explicitly risqué lyrics were particularly derided, with some commenting on her fans' real and more base motives for enjoying her music.

As anyone of a certain age probably knows, the Insane Clown Posse's famously devoted fan base calls themselves the Juggalos, and they have a reputation for unhinged behavior. Starting in 2000, Juggalos traveled from all corners of the globe to attend the Gathering of the Juggalos in Novi, Michigan. At the 2010 event, Tila Tequila became one of the many performers in attendance, but as the infamously riotous Juggalos turned on her, the show went horribly wrong.

The Juggalos are notorious for expressing their displeasure by throwing objects at performers, and Tequila's show was quickly cut off by a hail of plastic water bottles. She suffered superficial cuts and bruises, left the stage, and reportedly ran to her trailer while angry Juggalos smashed the windows. Her tweets throughout the night went from excitement to expressing her desire to take legal action against the event organizers.

Shortly after the Gathering incident, the Phoenix New Times reported statements by Andy Pellegrini, the Insane Clown Posse's record label's PR rep. Pellegrini blamed Tequila for the event, suggesting that the organizers warned her against performing. He claimed they offered to pay her and let her leave quietly. Pellegrini argued that "her injuries were only sustained because of her refusal to leave the stage." 

Tila Tequila experienced serious medical issues in 2012. Paramedics responded to an apparent distress call from Tequila's roommate at their home on February 9th that year, after Tequila reportedly nearly died by suicide via a number of unidentified pills. Sources told E! Online that Tequila had been in similar distressing situations in recent weeks, eventually culminating in the onset of an aneurysm. Her roommate found her slipping in and out of consciousness and unable to speak coherently, but by the time the story reached the press, Tequila's manager assured the press that she was on the mend.

Tequila's recovery took some time and she spent a full month in a rehab facility after her terrifying episode. Her manager spoke to E! Online after her stint in rehab, stating, "She is the healthiest she has ever been and is ready to get back to work." 

However, the story behind Tequila's hospitalization is slightly complicated. Radar Online reported a story from a source that claimed a different version of events: Tequila experienced the aneurysm, causing her to act irrationally, and took the pills to numb the pain. 

If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org

It's easy enough to assume that most celebrities have a scandal or two, but no one could have predicted the one-time star of "A Shot at Love" offering consistent vocal support for Adolf Hitler. Starting in 2013, Tila Tequila started posting a selection of extensive defenses of Hitler. Her stated belief is that the leader of the Third Reich was misunderstood, prompting her to express sympathy and attempt to reveal the truth about Hitler. Along with the troubling tirade, Tequila attached an edited image of herself clutching a handgun while wearing a Nazi armband and an SS hat.

Tequila's initial pro-Hitler hot takes were the first of many awful statements. While she initially maintained that those statements were not antisemitic, she issued blog posts that claimed to explain the secret history of Jewish people, playing into several old conspiracy theories with awful implications. Tequila became very fond of conspiracy theories around this time. When actor Paul Walker died in an automotive accident, she claimed that his death was part of a series of ritual murders. Considerable backlash didn't prompt her to slow down. In 2016, she posted on Twitter (via Israel National News) that Jewish conservative media personality Ben Shapiro should be killed, and threw similar hateful rhetoric at comedian Sarah Silverman and others. 

If you or a loved one has experienced a hate crime, contact the VictimConnect Hotline by phone at 1-855-4-VICTIM or by chat for more information or assistance in locating services to help. If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.

Tila Tequila was largely absent after she left "A Shot at Love" in 2008. She got her chance to return to the medium that sustained her fame in 2015, when she became a contestant on the sixteenth season of "Celebrity Big Brother." The British reality series reached out to several C-and-D-list American celebrities to compete with local talent. Tequila joined the show, but her run was short-lived, with her being ejected from the Big Brother house on her second day after producers on the show discovered her many antisemitic posts on social media. 

"Celebrity Big Brother" broadcaster Channel 5 claimed ignorance of Tequila's views, and that the showrunners removed Tequila from the house and the program as soon as they discovered her Facebook posts venerating Hitler.

Tequila posted a defense of her previous actions on Twitter. She admitted she'd "been suffering from severe depression and drug addiction," noting a crisis she experienced in 2012. "Celebrity Big Brother" and Channel 5 offered no response to her pleas for a second chance, and Tequila continued to make antisemitic statements after she ruined her opportunity on the show. 

Tila Tequila's post-reality show career has focused heavily on her firm belief in various conspiracy theories. She's voiced support for absurd narratives about 9/11, Jewish people, and the deaths of several other celebrities, but in January 2016, Tequila went even further when she posted a series of tweets arguing that the Earth is flat. This places her in rarified air with several other famous flat Earthers, including NBA player Kyrie Irving and rapper B.o.B. Tequila's arguments felt fairly standard for the flat Earth community, with a few fun twists.

These tweets vanished years ago, but a piece from GQ preserved them forever. Her first flat Earth tweet bemoaned the fact that, even in the year 2016, science remains resolutely unable to convince her of the roundness of her home planet, insisting that she has never seen the Earth's curvature. Drawing from her vast well of scientific knowledge, she also demanded to know why all of the buildings in New York City stand straight up, whereas on a spherical planet, they'd clearly be slightly tilted. Her most audacious claim was that airplanes would be unable to land on a spinning globe, maintaining that Earth's surface must be flat and stationary to accommodate every aircraft's takeoff and landing. 

Tila Tequila's fame is inextricable from social media. Her initial success developed almost entirely from her stunning performance on Myspace, which she once dominated as its most popular user. However, over the years, the ever-evolving social media ecosystem left Tequila behind. She found some attention on Twitter, but her attempts to draw fame from that platform ended in disgrace when the company permanently banned her account in 2016. Twitter was in the midst of a broad cleansing at the time and it sought to ban a vast array of accounts accused of hate speech, which necessitated the removal of a lot of alt-right figures. As Tequila had firmly established herself in that media bubble, she experienced the same fate.

The source of Tequila's apparent lifetime ban was her appearance at the National Policy Institute's 2016 conference, where she posted several photos of her performing Nazi salutes at the event. The NPI is a noted white nationalist group whose leader, Richard Spencer, also lost Twitter access around the same time. Tequila's involvement with the alt-right also included vocal support for Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler. 

In lieu of Twitter, Tequila followed the example of many other "canceled" social media icons by becoming much more active on Gab. Gab was and is almost exclusively known for right-wing content, granting Tequila a very comfortable new online home. 

Tila Tequila tried out a new stage name every few years, though people mostly just used her first pseudonym. In 2018, she abandoned the scandalous appeal that made her famous in favor of a firmly religious new direction, complete with the new nickname "Tornado Thien." This rebrand occurred primarily on social media, her main outlet at the time. Her username on YouTube changed to reflect her new gimmick before she started posting a long string of prayers, songs, and extended evangelical rants. She consistently referred to herself as "the Bride of Christ" in strange locations, including her Etsy art store.

Tornado Thien's most audacious attempt to rebrand involved a GoFundMe campaign to produce an original gospel album. She insisted that God called her to change her sound and create something new but the campaign, simply titled "I would like to release a gospel album," was woefully unsuccessful. Despite requesting $30,000 to fund this endeavor, she raised less than a tenth of that amount from fans, eventually leading the campaign to disappear from the internet. Those who stumbled upon the GoFundMe page could find a preview of one of the promised songs but, for better or for worse, the rest of the theoretical album remains completely hidden from the listening public.

"A Shot at Love" brought a ton of controversy to Tila Tequila. The show, like any reality show, attracted consistent rumors of false stories and hidden secrets, which never yielded much attention. A 2007 New York Post gossip article (via Fox News) cited a source that claimed Tequila was actually heterosexual and hiding a long-term straight relationship, making all of the dating show's supposed love connections a fiction. That rumor fizzled when the second season came out the following year. Despite Tequila publicly dating several women, she lent some truth to that extremely questionable suggestion by claiming she was never bisexual.

Tequila became a very vocal Christian in the 2010s, leading her to rebrand as "Tornado Thien." She called herself a "bride of Christ" and made many homophobic statements. In a 2018 YouTube video, Tequila stated that she was always pretending to be bisexual as part of a Hollywood humiliation ritual, characterizing her previous relationships as "gay for pay." Tequila went on to state that almost anyone who wanted to be famous would have to accept some mysterious cabal's desire to normalize queer identities, apparently by forcing straight people to play along. Her statements were just another chapter in her general downslide into hard-right conspiracy ideology.

Tila Tequila had her first daughter, Isabella Monroe, in 2014. The birth of her child arguably contributed to her gradual escape from the public eye, as she reportedly put more focus on being a mother than on her other activities. In 2018, Tequila's ex-partner, Thomas Whitaker, filed a weird child custody case. His stated intention was to take their daughter away from Tequila and become the child's sole managing conservator, claiming that the change would be in his daughter's best interest. Prior to the legal filing, Whitaker and Tequila had no formal custody arrangement, but the child lived with Tequila. Whitaker stated that he took action after Tequila began barring him from visiting.

In his legal filing, Whitaker accused Tequila of engaging in an extended pattern of child neglect. This brought up some questionable choices on Tequila's part. In 2015, she styled her infant daughter as a small Adolf Hitler for an Instagram post, drawing a ton of negative attention. Despite Whitaker's allegations, he stated that he didn't want Tequila to lose contact with the child. He urged the court to grant him full custody while still allowing Tequila to have supervised visits. 

Tequila won her battle in 2019, when the court awarded her primary custody. This victory came with a long list of rules that governed the couple's behavior in front of the child and an allowance for Whitaker to visit his daughter for four hours every Sunday.

In the latter years of the 2010s, Tila Tequila set aside many of her brushes with fame to focus on motherhood. She had her first daughter in 2014 and her second in 2018, and while there are several reasons the former "A Shot with Love" star disappeared, the most wholesome one is unquestionably her relationship with her children. Tequila announced her second pregnancy on Facebook in March 2018, and her posts on the subject also took plenty of time to issue some hate to her haters, claiming that some accused her of laziness while she was on bed rest for her pregnancy. 

In 2018, Tequila posted a short YouTube video with her second daughter, Annabelle. As part of her newfound religious turn, she regularly notes her second daughter as a gift from God. In her original pregnancy Facebook posts (via E! News), she claimed, "God took all your wretched curses and turned them into huge blessings for me instead." As of late 2024, there is vanishingly little information out there about Tequila's current life with her two children. Tequila isn't one of the several celebrities who had their children in secret, but they're still being kept safely out of the public eye.