Four years after being dubbed “S.F. Karen,” Lisa Alexander says she’s finally ready to share her side of the story.
Alexander was recorded interrogating James Juanillo, who was stenciling “Black Lives Matter” on a wall outside of his Pacific Heights home in June 2020. She immediately received public backlash when the video went viral.
While she apologized to Juanillo shortly after the confrontation, Alexander appeared on “Dr. Phil Primetime” earlier this month to defend her actions.
The episode, which aired on April 19, can be watched on McGraw’s newly launched television network, Merit Street Media, or on Merit+, which offers free live and on-demand content.
The video, which garnered more than 13 million views on social media, shows Alexander and her friend Robert Larkins approaching Juanillo as he was stenciling.
They both begin to ask if the home is his property and claim to know that he did not live there. The two eventually call the police.
Soon after, Alexander was labeled a “Karen,” a term that refers to a white woman who acts entitled when interacting with people of color (Juanillo is Filipino). Amid the drama, LaFace was dropped from Birchbox’s subscription boxes and Larkins was fired from his job at the financial firm Raymond James.
Juanillo was invited to speak with McGraw in an episode of “Dr. Phil” that aired in November 2020 to discuss “Karens” and racism in the U.S. He has since moved out of the Pacific Heights home but still lives in the city.
Juanillo told the Chronicle he was aware of Alexander’s interview before it aired, and said that producers reached out to him asking for permission to use the video he had taken of the encounter. He said he agreed on the condition that they would show the unedited video in its entirety, yet it wasn’t included in the recent episode.
“I was very disappointed that they didn’t air the video of the incident from that day, y’know, so that speaks for itself,” he said. “Instead they constructed a narrative that was contradictory to what actually happened that day. … I was fairly disgusted to see it.”
In the interview, Alexander recounted the conflict, claiming she didn’t see what Juanillo was writing when she approached him. She also said she returned to Juanillo’s home the following day with an apology letter in an attempt to make amends. When she was unable to speak with him in person, she issued a public statement.
“When I watch the video I am shocked and sad that I behaved the way I did,” she wrote in the 2020 statement. “It was disrespectful to Mr. Juanillo and I am deeply sorry for that.”
McGraw weighed in on the situation on his show, noting that he didn’t think Alexander’s apology was necessary.
“What are you apologizing for? … If there was a misunderstanding, it was not on her part and I think that apology got used against her,” he said.
Evan Nierman, founder and CEO of Red Banyan Crisis Management Firm and Alexander’s public relations representative, chimed in on the conversation from the audience, agreeing with McGraw.
Alexander’s side of the story was first recounted in Nierman’s 2023 book, “The Cancel Culture Curse.”
The incident continues to negatively impact her life, Alexander said. She told McGraw that she was scared to go outside after the video went viral, claiming that strangers went to her home with baseball bats and shotguns.
“My identity, my integrity, my personality and my career was completely stolen from me because someone else decided who I was and what I was saying,” Alexander said during a prerecorded segment of the episode.
Juanillo said that he has also received threats of violence since the incident, and is ultimately disheartened by the way both Alexander and McGraw ignored the contents of the video in their discussion.
“What you saw on video, it was true. That’s really her revealing herself to the world for two minutes,” Juanillo said. “The only thing I did was share that with the world.”