Lil Nas X’s TIFF premiere was delayed by a bomb threat

Toronto International Film Festival attendees and Lil Nas X experienced a scary moment this weekend, as the Saturday evening premiere of the rapper’s forthcoming documentary, Lil Nas X: Long Live Montero, was delayed due to a bomb threat.

According to Variety, the incident occurred as the tour film’s creative team was arriving on the red carpet ahead of its 10 p.m. premiere in the prestigious Roy Thomson Hall. While co-directors Carlos López Estrada and Zac Manuel and editor Andrew Morrow were already out and greeting fans, organizers were alerted to the threat before Lil Nas X exited his vehicle. The threat was proved not credible and cleared by Toronto law enforcement in about 20 minutes, after which the documentary’s star was allowed to join the rest of the team on the carpet. All in all, the screening went on as planned approximately 30 minutes late.

While an unnamed source for Variety claimed that “the threat specifically targeted the rapper for being a Black queer artist,” TIFF organizers and the Toronto police say otherwise. “Our standard security measures remained in place during [the incident] and the screening commenced with a slight delay. To our knowledge, this was a general threat and not directed at the film or the artist,” said a TIFF spokesperson.

“A passerby uttered a threat towards private security,” a representative for the Toronto Police Service added. “Out of an abundance of caution, the Toronto Police and the private security swept the scene and cleared within 20 minutes. The threat was general and did not target any one person.”

Lil Nas X has not directly addressed the incident as of time of writing, although he did post a red carpet video on Instagram over the weekend. Still, whatever the reason, a threat of violence at the premiere of a film celebrating a Black queer artist is undeniably charged.

“I know in my lifetime, while I’m here, I’m going to do my best to make the ceiling unreachable to where we can go as Black queer people. And I mean unreachable as, like, it can go above and beyond,” the rapper told Variety before heading off to Canada. “I feel like we live in a generation where Black queer people really control culture, and they’re helping really take the world to the next level. And I think that’s going to have an effect on our youth watching us.”