Addison Rae is officially TikTok’s top earner, but as Josh Smith gets the primary exclusive cover interview with the social media sensation, he meets the very real woman behind the billions of likes and many followers.
There are social media phenomena then there's Addison Rae. in only 18 months since joining TikTok, the American 20-year-old has amassed 4.9 billion likes on TikTok (to put that in perspective, we’re talking 3.5 times the whole population of China, FYI) and 76 million followers through her addictive array of dance routines, lip-syncs and wonderful videos.
She has since been named TikTok’s highest earner by Forbes, with an estimated fortune of $5 million, largely because of deals with brands starting from the bald eagle to Reebok. That’s before you even take under consideration Addison’s own cosmetics item Beauty, which launched in August 2020 selling exclusively online, or the very fact that she has also just wrapped her first feature He’s All That. Addison is taking the lead within the reboot of noughties rom-com She’s All That – opposite Cobra Kai’s Tanner Buchanan and featuring a cameo from her BFF, Kourtney Kardashian (but more thereon later).
All of this is often made even more incredible once you realize that Addison only joined the fledgling social media app in August 2019, after her career as a competitive dancer stalled. Since the age of six, Addison had been competing in dance competitions across the USA. She grew up in Lafayette, Louisiana together with her parents Monty, and Sheri, a former makeup artist and two younger brothers Lucas and Enzo, and was on track to pursue a dance career when a ‘failure’ forced her to vary course.
“In my senior year I used to be trying out for the school dance team, and that I ended up not making it,” she reminisces. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh. How am I getting to continue entertaining and performing without making the team?’ i assumed I had to offer abreast of all my dreams, but about four to 5 months later I started social media and TikTok. All of a sudden – out of nowhere – I used to be posting all the time and getting likes, views, and followers. Social media offered me a very awesome roadway to require. Sometimes the road you didn't think you were getting to take is that the one that you simply do, and you're glad that you simply did.”
Her success encouraged her to drop out of Louisiana State University where she was studying broadcast journalism and swapped her student digs for TikTok’s Hype House in LA. The Spanish-style mansion – complete with a big pool and large enough to deal with 19 creators – was also home to fellow mega-creators, Charli and Dixie D'Amelio and Bryce Hall (now Addison’s boyfriend). If you're not familiar, consider it because the Mickey Mouse Club for Gen-Z talent.
Today, however, a bit like the remainder folks Addison is in lockdown, now living in an apartment in LA, which it's as if she’s barely moved in. There are boxes scattered across the bare-walled, high-ceilinged white living room; the sole decoration is an inside palm. But soon after Zooming into her world, I learn why this woman, all sunshine and smiles, has captured the hearts and minds of Generation Z and beyond. Addison, wearing an oversized black hoodie, her brunette hair relaxed and tousled, is more Zen than her TikTok persona suggests, and it’s a bit like chatting to any regular 20 years old.
But unlike most twenty-something women, she has reached such high levels of success so quickly, she’s had to affect an onslaught of trolling that sadly seems to return with it. “I've dealt tons with online hate and social media drama, with folks that are very opinionated and do not want people to be happy,” Addison reveals, before trying to find the reason behind the hate.
“People see people's successes sometimes and need it had been them, which is completely understandable. I've even been there in my life too, where I'm like, ‘I wish I had this or I wish I had what she had.’ That brings you to envy sometimes and that I would bring that anger out onto them, which has never been a satisfying thing. I’ve realized you've got to be happy for people.”
“When I check out negative comments I can’t let it get to me that much and that I think, ‘That doesn't define me, and that they don't truly know me in my heart.’ There's getting to be folks that do not like you who want to tear you down, but you've got to like yourself for who you're .”
What would be a triggering comment for her, I ask? “A lot of it's to try to do with body image,” Addison sighs. “It's a very hard thing to affect when you are a girl, especially browsing your teens. I'm 20 and my body is consistently changing, but people have this high standard around body image and say, ‘Oh, you've got to seem like this to seem great or to seem hot or to be cool or to be pretty.’ For me, tons of individuals have said, ‘Oh I like how comfortable she is and she or he doesn't appear as if the sweetness standard.’ it is a backhanded compliment sometimes because people are going to be like, ‘I'm so glad she's confident that she doesn't look perfect.’ It hurts sometimes when people say that, because I feel everyone's perfect, so why is that there some standard of ‘this body is the ideal body’? I even have thought tons within the past year that it doesn't define me and that I am learning to like my body and who I'm, for what I'm.”
She adds: “There's this one quote that I love: ‘comparison is that the thief of joy.’ That's so true. Once you start comparing yourself to someone, you're just asking to be upset. You're comparing yourself to something that you simply will never be because you're only you,” she smiles.
Comparison culture has sadly been affecting Addison since her dancing days. “Growing up as a dancer there have been always comparisons,” Addison adds, “and people saying, ‘If you're this age, you ought to be at this level.” Or, ‘If you're on this team, you ought to be at this ranking.’ But most are browsing their lives at different stages, and nobody is on the precise same path, ever. I even have learned to seek out self-validation therein you'll only be the simplest that you simply are often .”
Comparison traps are the worst, I agree, knowing I even have personally lost hours of my life comparing my body to other men on Instagram. “A hundred percent!” Addison screams. “I want to ask myself, ‘Why doesn't my body appear as if that? Or why isn't my hair that way? Or why is my face this way?’ or maybe feature-wise, sometimes I might just really check out myself and pick myself apart for no reason. there's such a lot happening within the world today, adding self-esteem onto that's tough. If you cannot mentally, emotionally, or physically love who you're it becomes really difficult to even be happy. I do know I've not been eating the simplest during quarantine or even not understanding the maximum amount and watching tons of TV, but we'd like to offer ourselves grace.” we will all relate thereto, I tell her, putting down my chocolate biscuit while scripting this.
Aside from taking the time to form herself feel good through exercise, caring for her skin, spending “real-time with people” far away from her phone, and “filling my feed with things which will help,” Addison has been attending therapy to assist her to grapple together with her life-changing 18 months. “I started seeing a therapist, which was helpful just to not feel so down about myself,” she shares. “Self-worth may be a big thing that I have been performing on the past few months because it's a true struggle, and it does affect you in your lifestyle, not having high self-worth. Therapy may be a good way to figure thereon and it’s an outlet to talk about things that are bothering you internally. Just having the ability to possess someone to speak to has been an enormous thing on behalf of me and understanding that if you let people understand you a touch more, then they're going to .”
What is the game-changing advice she has learned in therapy, I wonder? “Not letting your past define your future. Not falling into equivalent things that you simply have seen or known before that you know aren't right, and not letting that dictate what you are going to try to do in your life,” Addison replies. “And, directing your path and making your life what you would like it to be. you are making your destiny.”
Leaning on her TikTok sisterhood, including Charli and Dixie D’Amelio – who regularly appear in her TikTok videos – and, of course, her pal Kourtney Kardashian (the pair met after Kourtney’s son Mason became one among many Addison superfans), has also helped Addison to affect the spotlight. “Having a network over the web or outside of it's equally important. Luckily, I even have an excellent group of friends to be there on behalf of me, understand what I'm browsing and where I'm. Finding that core of friends is vital to keeping me happy,” she says.
Given that Kourtney has intentionally and unintentionally shared practically every aspect of her life with the world’s Kardashian-thirsty audience, Addison has sought her advice on fame. “It's inspiring to ascertain folks that are so happy in their lives and are so put together after everything they have been through,” Addison reveals. “That's why I search to Kourtney tons and her entire family – throughout everything you'll recline on your family and friends to have that emotional and mental support. It pulls you thru at the top. Something that she told me was, ‘Make sure you're always enjoying what you're doing because this is often the life you're living. confirm it's something that you're pleased with and you're continuing to try to to the items you're keen on .’”
Having “difficult and honest conversations” together with her parents, Sheri and Monty – both now influencers in their title with 1.2 million and 355,000 Instagram followers respectively – have also helped Addison. These conversations now play call at her podcast together with her mother Mama Knows Best, where the pair discuss adulting. “I want to think I had to evolve to each beauty standard,” Addison tells me, before revealing comedic combat in their deep conversations. “My mom always told me don’t compare yourself to them because they're always getting to be evolving. My mom wont to have thicker eyebrows, but she tweezed all of them away because she was like, ‘In the '90s, that was the good thing to possess the tiny eyebrows – wow I just wish I had left my eyebrows normal!’”
Having been through her struggles with beauty standards, it’s no wonder Addison wanted to sprinkle her trademark sort of empowerment through her own clean, vegan beauty line, ITEM Beauty. With cute packaging and snappy names, the range features everything from lip gloss (Lip Quip) to brow pencils (Brow Chow), targeted at the beauty-hungry Gen-Z audience, with a reasonable tag to match. And from the offset, Addison was clear she wanted to be her breed of beauty mogul: one who campaigns for change.
“I started seeing a therapist, which was helpful just to not feel so down about myself... Self-worth may be a big thing that I have been performing on the past few months because it's a true struggle, and it does affect you in your lifestyle .”
Before reaching beauty boss status, however, there has been the odd ridiculous thing Addison has done in the name of beauty. “I was very obsessed with dimples and loved the way they looked on people,” she laughs. “I looked up a YouTube video on how to get dimples, and I would literally” – Addison pauses to pick up a whisk from a discarded box and press the handle into her cheek – “You would take a pin, I was getting pencils, pens, and markers, and then spin it in your dimple. I was like, ‘I need it! It's the prettiest thing ever! Dimples are the best in the world!’ I remember my cousin and I were in our rooms trying to give ourselves dimples because we were so in love with it.”
Despite making it as a Gen-Z icon and successful entrepreneur at just 20 years old, Addison says her biggest ‘pinch yourself’ moment came in summer last year when she was cast in He’s All That. “It’s been a dream of mine forever to be an actress,” she says. “To be called one now is just really insane. Growing up, I was always in acting classes and watching movies and pretending I was the character.” As she speaks, she just happens to be sitting proudly in the He’s All That branded director’s chair that she took home after wrapping filming in January.
Does she worry about crossing over into a new realm and the dreaded media criticism often directed at women who branch out from what they’re known for? “The reaction is a little scary sometimes because people don't know what I did or aspired to do before I started social media,” Addison tells me. “People base anything I do off, ‘Oh, she started on social media,’ but without knowing my background or knowing I've always been in acting classes.”
Perhaps the most telling moment about who Addison Rae is comes when I ask her when she’s been the proudest of herself. And it has nothing to do with stats, followers, or even landing a Hollywood movie. “Just staying mentally healthy has been a really big accomplishment for me,” she replies after some thought.
“Going through the changes of life, really staying grounded, and remembering where I'm from. There are so many times that I've been like, ‘This is a lot, maybe it's mentally challenging,’ and then wanting to give up. But then I remember that I got where I am today and that I should take every opportunity I can to just accomplish everything that I dreamed of.” That is exactly the secret behind Addison’s meteoric rise: she is paving her path as a self-made woman.
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