Global girl group Katseye said they have received sexist comments and death threats since their debut last year.
The group, composed of Sophia Laforteza, Daniela Avanzini, Lara Raj, Manon Bannerman, Megan Skiendiel, and Jeung Yoonchae, was formed under a joint partnership between South Korea’s Hybe Corporation, the company behind BTS and NewJeans, and US label Geffen Records.
“I try to tell myself it doesn’t matter, but if 1,000 people are sending you death threats, it’s jarring. Even if it’s not going to happen, it’s heavy,” Raj told the BBC.
Raj, an American citizen of Indian and Sri Lankan heritage, revealed that she deleted her X account after she was falsely reported to immigration authorities for allegedly living and working in the US illegally.
“I realised I am not the audience for other people’s opinions,” she said, adding that the comments she saw were incredibly sexist and “dystopian”.
“People see us as women to rank. They’ll grade us based on how pretty we are, our singing skill, dancing skill, and then add it up and give us a percentage.”
Laforteza said: “Our career has been really short, but I feel like we’ve already had a lot of things said to us, to our families. We know that we signed up for being so public. We know it’s a part of fame. But it doesn’t change the fact that we are human.”
Katseye were conceived in 2023 with the explicit goal of creating what the producers called “the first truly global girl group”. The project began with an international talent search in 2022 that drew over 120,000 applicants from across the world, culminating in a Netflix reality competition series titled The Debut: Dream Academy.
Over several weeks, contestants were trained and evaluated through a blend of K-pop and Western pop performance systems before six were chosen – Raj, who lived in New York; Laforteza, who is Filipino; Bannerman, who is Swiss-Ghanaian and lived in Zurich; ballroom dancer Daniela Avanzini, a Venezuelan-Cuban American from Atlanta who had appeared on America’s Got Talent and was a top 10 finalist on So You Think You Can Dance: The Next Generation; Megan Skiendziel, a Chinese-Singaporean American dancer and vocalist from Honolulu; and South Korea’s Jeong Yoonchae, who had spent five years training to be a K-pop idol.
Trained in Los Angeles under a system modelled partly on K-pop’s rigorous choreography and vocal standards, they officially debuted in June 2024 with the single “Debut”, followed by their first EP SIS (Soft Is Strong) two months later.
Their English-language follow-up single “Touch” went viral on TikTok and earned them early chart placements in both Asia and the US, while “Gnarly” became their first Billboard Hot 100 entry.
They have since been nominated for two Grammy Awards, including Best New Artist, and have appeared at major festivals and in global brand campaigns, including a viral advert for the clothing brand Gap.
In a short docu-series that followed the group’s tour in Asia released in November last year, Raj talked about the “bittersweet” nature of the tour for her because she’d begun to get a lot of hate on social media.
“Social media has started to affect me badly. I think, especially since the documentary came out, I’ve been getting a lot of hate recently,” she said.
She continued, saying she broke down the day they performed in the Philippines because she saw a lot of “crazy stuff”.
“I saw death threats that day.”
In September this year, former Smiths frontman Morrissey had to cancel two shows due to a “credible threat on his life”.
A statement posted to his official Instagram stated: “In recent days, there has been a credible threat on Morrissey’s life. Out of an abundance of caution for the safety of both the artist and audience, tonight’s engagement at Foxwoods has been cancelled. We appreciate your understanding.”
Earlier that week, a 26-year-old man from Ottawa, Canada, was released on bail after allegedly threatening to kill Morrissey at his show in the city. The gig went ahead without incident.
As Ottawa Citizen reported, the man allegedly posted on social media site Bluesky: “Steven Patrick Morrissey when you perform at TD Place here in Ottawa next week on the evening of September 12th, 2025 at about 9pm, I will be present at the venue in the audience and I will attempt to shoot you many times and kill you with a very large gun that I own illegally.”
