Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - Ep. 12 Brittani Louise Taylor - Ear Biscuits
Episode Date: December 13, 2013Brittani Louise Taylor, known for her popular song parodies, vlogs, and challenge videos, joins Rhett & Link this week to discuss her experiences with childhood bullying, her struggle for achievement ...as an actress in Hollywood, and how Shane Dawson played a large role in propelling her into the YouTube spotlight. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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This, this, this, this is Mythical. buttonlink.com, but I think we need to change it and make it go to just peanut butter type stuff.
You want to start selling peanut butter? I don't know. I'm going to tool around with it.
Okay. You look into that. In the meantime, I'll let them know that they can try out
Squarespace for free without even entering in their credit card information. And then once
they're convinced that they want to actually go forward with this whole thing, make sure you get 10% off by using the offer code RANDL.
R-A-N-D-L.
So you can visit internetpeanutbutter.com, and it'll just redirect to Rhett and Link
because I haven't done it yet.
I got to carve out the time.
But you should also immediately go to squarespace.com, use offer code RANDL.
Now it's time for an Ear Biscuit.
Welcome to Ear Biscuits.
I'm Link.
And I'm Rhett.
It's time for another conversation with someone interesting from the internet.
At the round table of dim lighting this week, we have Brittany Louise Taylor.
That's BLT, not the sandwich, but the YouTuber extraordinaire, music video spoofs,
vlogging, all types of stuff.
We talked to her about her bouts with bullying growing up,
how she took on Hollywood at the young age of 19.
And the unconventional methods she employed
to build her YouTube channel.
Unconventional.
You won't believe how many videos
she watched in her first year on YouTube. Watched, not made. Astounding. Speaking of astounding,
I had what they called the confused burrito for dinner tonight. I was there. I heard you order it
and I was confused. Is that why it's called Confused Burrito?
No. Well, there's this Mexican restaurant
not too far from us. Well, that's not saying
a lot. We're in Los Angeles, but
this is probably the closest Mexican
restaurant to our studio and we've never been
and we decided
to go to it. Nice atmosphere, by the
way. It was kind of like a Disney
World restaurant on the inside. Like doors to
nowhere, windows to nowhere.
Yeah, barrels
with nothing in them.
Yeah, I loved it.
No animatronics, though.
But,
I always go for the special.
What were the barrels?
Is that like casks of?
Whiskey.
Tequila.
Tequila.
Yeah.
I don't,
I always go for the specials.
You know, I'm the guy, I get the McRib when the McRib comes back.
The grass is always greener for you.
Yeah, and I mean, if the chef has taken the time to do something a little bit different,
I'm going to take a chance with him, even if I don't know him.
And it is a chance.
That's my perspective.
If the chef is trying something new, that's what he calls a special.
This is especially new to me. It might be especially bad to you.
Well, it was called the Confused Burrito, and it had...
Great name, by the way.
Chili Colorado, which is beef and red sauce on one side,
and then it had salsa feta de on the other side,
and that was pork and green sauce.
And I was like, it's like a Christmas burrito.
That was pretty exciting to me.
And I got it, but what
was really confusing to me
is why I finished it.
Now listen, they bring this thing
out. Now I just ordered the carnitas.
Can't go wrong with that.
They had guacamole?
It's like the barbecue of Mexico.
Give me the carnitas, hold the tomatoes.
Brought it out,
it looked great. I looked over at Rhett's plate
and it was, gosh,
it was, oh man,
the burrito was so big
and it looked like
it looked
like someone, like
a doctor had operated
pulled like the largest organ out of a very huge animal and put it on a hot plate.
I mean, it had a couple of different color sauces, and it looked fleshy.
It was huge.
No, it looked incredible.
It just looked like a burrito with two colors.
But here's the deal. I mean, I don't know what it is.
I don't know what it was.
But I've always, always, without exception, finished everything on my plate.
Well, the thing that I'm knowing this about you, the thing that I said to Rhett, people,
was before you started eating, I said, can you picture everything that's on that huge
plate inside of you a few minutes from now?
I mean, is that even possible?
And I answered you, not only can I picture it, but I will make it happen right here in front of you.
You will picture it.
You will see a movie of it right now if you just watch me do it.
See a movie of it.
And I did it.
I did it.
That's what hanging out with me is like. It's like constantly being at a movie and I did it I did it that's what you know that's what hanging out
with me is like
it's like constantly
being at a movie
I ate it
and
I'm beginning
to regret that
well I actually
I've already regretted
it three times
I've had to take
three
three breaks
okay okay
yeah
well I gotcha
okay
I'm sorry
okay
I'm sorry
I am really sorry you know if you have to stop by Okay, okay, yeah. Well, I got you. Okay. I'm sorry. Okay.
I am really sorry.
You know, if you have to stop by,
I'm not going to say the name of the restaurant.
So many conversations here are bathroom related.
No, hey, you don't know what I was talking about.
No, I don't.
Just don't order the confused burrito because it will confuse your body.
That's why they call it that.
It's just the sheer volume of it confused your body, man. You need portion control, dude.
You should have cut it right down that part.
The demarcation between the red sauce and the green sauce
should have been the place where you cut that thing in half,
and then you could have had half for later.
Yeah, but then it wouldn't have been a two-tone experience.
It would have been
red or green.
I wanted red and green.
Well, it's interesting
in segueing to
Brittany Louise Taylor,
there is this
confused burrito nature
to her start on YouTube.
Hmm.
See what I mean by that.
Wow.
Okay.
Maybe it involved
a character
of a different sauce
and then her
of a different sauce
a little bit later.
I don't know. Just see if the analogy fits as we get in this conversation.
Here it is, our Ear Biscuit with Brittany Louise Taylor.
I shot a Hunger Games parody yesterday and I was at the beach and Kat in this costume and
everyone was laughing at me because I'm singing because because there's like there's a couple fart jokes
and so I had to listen
so I was like let's see these lyrics
in this Katniss costume with a bow and arrow
and I ran into you know Keep The Heat
I ran into him he's like oh hey
I was out in Malibu like in the middle of nowhere
like at this beach
only in LA. Were you at the
El Matador beach? Yeah.
That's the beach. That's the beach.
I didn't know about that.
We shot on that beach too.
Okay, because I needed just a good location.
Well, it's like the One Direction.
I didn't know that.
You don't know your beautiful beach, right?
That was the beach?
Isn't it?
I think so.
But you'll see it in a lot of videos where it's, okay, we need a beach with like a rock.
That has a hole underneath that looks like,
kind of like Hawaii or something, yeah.
Yeah, so we shot our rub some bacon on it there.
And there's always something going on down there
because when we were down there,
there was a guy shooting a model,
a bikini model on the beach.
And we were like, you know what?
She was kind of, she was in the background
of our robot shot. Yeah. And we were like, you know what? Let's kind of, she was in the background of our robot shot and we were like,
you know what?
Let's just leave this.
She had on a thong
and we've never had a thong
in any of our videos.
You've never had cheeks
in the videos.
And this was not a cover
of the thong song,
which we've considered doing
many times,
but this particular time
it was an original song.
Like,
that song is so old, dude.
Nobody even knows
what that song is.
Thong, thong, thong,
they know what it is
they did
no because I did
I did a video
on my second channel
with Andre
I think we had some sugar
and we were just like laughing
so we're like
we didn't even know the lyrics
and we were just like
both going back and forth
and like
can't handle it
and he was like
I'm like
can't handle this
I was like
just knew like one word
in every line
that he was singing
it was brilliant
so have you ever had
butt cheeks in one of your videos?
No, I think I've had.
Yours or anybody else's?
Well, I mean, I've had pants super tight,
but you probably,
it probably leaves a little to the imagination.
Super tight pants.
Yeah.
Like in the Katniss video we just shot,
I was like, well, okay.
They're like Lululemon pants
and like there's leaves nothing to the imagination like you
can see the cheeks in all their
glory. Right isn't that what the big
controversy is about?
But their pants yeah they are
they're a little yeah
I didn't use a lot of butt shots
so. Okay you kept it tasteful
I did
I tried to. We kept the butt
shots at the long distance.
But if you click on the actual girl in the background during that video.
You guys put an annotation?
It brings up a hidden annotation of her walking with the robot.
But we actually did ask her to put a shirt on before that.
Well, she wasn't topless.
She wasn't topless, but't topless but we were like you know what just you know
we just
you know
if a
you know
a two year old
is out there
watching this video
happens to accidentally
click on this
was it like a little
easter egg then
yeah yeah
we had a bunch of them
in that video
anyway
okay
no I had
it was really funny
we kept trying to
frame out this guy
because we wanted to
shoot towards the water
but there's this guy
that was scuba diving
and for lobster so you keep seeing his fins come up and then like him come up and dive back down so you kept trying to frame out this guy because we wanted to shoot towards the water, but there's this guy that was scuba diving and for lobster.
So you keep seeing his fins come up
and then like him come up and dive back down.
So you're trying to frame out the lobster guy.
I told you about this.
You could just go dive off of the coast of Malibu
and you could just get lobsters.
Wow.
He caught like six of them.
Now, were his butt cheeks exposed?
No, we saw a lot of fin.
Lots and lots of fin.
Not a lot of fin. Not a lot of cheek. Gratuitous fin. Yeah. Yeah. And we had a lot of fin lots and lots of fin not a lot of gratuitous fin yeah yeah and we
like i had a lot of people because you know at that beach they have like you know the upper where
like the stairs are those thing a mountain well there's like everyone comes sitting up there and
watching us we start to get like this crowd of like people like what is she doing because i have
this bow and arrow and i'm like lip syncing to these lyrics here's the age old question though
did you get a permit? No.
I can't afford permits.
Of course,
we didn't either.
I mean,
I've talked to many people who have shot at El Matador
and no one's ever gotten a permit.
One Direction probably did though.
I know.
I think that,
I don't know.
I mean,
and I don't even know.
I'm one of those people like,
I just fly by the seat of my pants
and like film in different places
and if we get in trouble,
we go somewhere else.
Yeah, right.
Go to the next beach.
And I'm always super polite.
Exactly.
I'm always super polite and I'm super nice.
And the only time that I got in trouble a little bit,
we were filming at the old zoo in Griffith Park.
And I didn't know that that's heavily patrolled by the rangers.
And it's haunted by the ghosts of animals.
Oh, is it?
Yeah.
I didn't know this.
I didn't get that like creepy vibe.
Well, that's good.
You weren't haunted.
You just were approached by a ranger.
Just approached by a ranger.
And I had a pink wig on and this like floral, like full floral costume.
And he was like, you can't be filming here.
I do have a permit.
We just ended up going up the street and like running and filming in the bushes.
So we just like ran away.
But I got what I needed before he kicked us out.
Oh yeah.
That's what we do.
Well,
I was going to bring you
back to butt cheeks
one more time
but instead of doing that,
why don't we just go back
to,
go back to your backstory
and not your backside.
Okay,
not the backside,
just the backstory.
Where are you from?
I'm from Sedona, Arizona.
Well,
I moved when I was one and a half.
My brother is really allergic to mosquitoes.
So he used to blow up like a balloon
in Minnesota where we're from. It's like
Minnesota. It's like the national birds.
Like, there's mosquitoes everywhere.
Where in Minnesota? St. Paul.
St. Paul. Twin cities. Well, no.
One of the twin cities. Yeah.
Well, you can't have one without the other.
Now, your laughter
sounds like a machine gun.
That's, it's a genetic thing.
My brother does it too.
It only happens for like,
now I'm like totally self-conscious about it.
It happens.
No, it's great.
It happens randomly
and we call it the machine gun thing.
Can you do it again?
Like, but that's not, that's me trying,
but like it's when I think something's really funny
that it usually comes out.
I either squeal or a machine gun.
It's a little frightening.
Not both at the same time.
No.
Okay, so you and your brother do that.
Are you also allergic to mosquitoes?
I'm not.
He is.
So you got that gene, but not the other gene.
Yeah.
Okay.
I got the machine gun laughter gene.
Machine gun laughter is both of us and the mosquitoes.
The bugs always liked Blake.
He's the one that if we go camping, Blake's my older brother. brother so if we go camping he's the one that gets eaten alive in two seconds and is covered
like lotion i mean so this was so serious that it required yeah he would relocate relocate he
literally would blow up like just his whole body was just allergic so and he was just a toddler and
my brother was 17 months older than me so he was three at the time and i was one and a half and we like my mom's like well the two places we could go to were new mexico or arizona for like not a ton of mosquitoes so we
lived in new mexico first what is she doing like talking to how do you find this out is it i think
that i don't even know how you find that because that was like the library yeah exactly that was
before internet that was probably word of mouth i'm sure now you could probably go on google and
put like you know cities without mosquitoes but i think it was just probably yeah a lot of word of mouth and
they wanted like a small community someplace to raise us that would be safe and and so what were
what were your parents doing at the time oh um my my parents were so funny my uh my dad was an
airline pilot and my mom was a flight attendant and they they met on no but this is really funny
they met when they met on uh the, my mom would have never dated him.
She didn't know that he was an airline pilot because they were notorious players.
This is like back in the catch me if you can kind of days where pilots, the moment they came on the plane, the wedding rings came off.
You know, that whole thing.
And all the women, my mom used to have to be weighed in.
You couldn't be five pounds over.
Your weight, your nails had to be perfect.
All the women were gorgeous.
That was like the actresses of her day like everyone wanted to be a flight attendant
so she was just literally they were weighed in literally weighed literally you come in and if
you were five pounds over your weight limit you could not fly well you do need to be able to fit
in the middle aisle i mean i'm just you know seriously i think that should be that should
be the realistic limit.
It shouldn't be a mass thing.
It should be a volume thing.
Yeah, but she had to literally get notes from her doctor
because she was allergic to nail polish.
Our whole family has allergies.
So she couldn't wear it.
And so she had to bring a note with her
and bring it with her to every check-in
or else she wouldn't be allowed to fly
because her nails were painted.
It was crazy.
I do not accept service from flight attendants
that do not have their nails painted. Okay. Well,. I do not accept service from flight attendants that do not have
their nails painted.
Okay.
Well, then you would
not like my mom.
So they met on a plane
just as passengers
and she said they were
dating for two months
before she asked him,
like, what do you do?
He's like, I'm a pilot.
She's like, no, you don't.
You're not a pilot.
I don't date pilots.
So he had to go get
his uniform to prove it to her,
but they were married
and my mom was still working for a while when she had me.
So I think when we moved to Arizona, she was still flying,
but then she decided she wanted to be home with the kids.
It was too hard.
But they were able to just pick up and move somewhere else
because of the way that the flight industry worked?
Yeah, it's pretty easy because you just have to be near a major city
that you can be based.
My dad worked for Northwest,
so there are certain places like you at St. Paul was a base and like phoenix was like a like a main station it
just had to be someplace that he could get to wherever else he needed to go so there's certain
cities that you had to live near and so i think that's part of the reason they picked arizona too
was that you know it was close to phoenix like an hour and a half so your mom is allergic to nail
polish everything your brother is she's allergic to everything?
Everything.
She's the one when I was raised Catholic
and then we just switched.
Now we're just Christian, I don't know.
In Catholic, they have the incense.
She'd be the one just hacking and her eyes streaming
and have to run out when they do the incense down the aisles.
We'd have to sit in back and she'd have to bring like allergy medication and like sneak out she can't handle it she should have just channeled that into like a big emotional
reaction and they're gonna be like look how spiritual that lady is i've been healed i've
been healed that's a charismatic church not a catholic church my understanding yeah when you
do that at the catholic church they kind of just look at you like what's wrong with that lady you
need to go to the church of God down the street.
You have to keep it in.
It's all about keeping it on the inside.
Right.
Live with your pain.
No, but so yeah, like our whole family has food issues.
I don't know.
What do you have?
Me?
I have Trina.
This is awful.
And I hate it.
I have a Trina allergy, which means I can't have almonds, coconut, any kind of nuts.
And I love nuts.
I do.
I love peanut butter.
I love peanut butter.
Is peanut butter a tree nut?
No, peanuts are actually a fungus.
But most people, I know way too much about food.
What?
Back up a second.
Yeah, peanuts are actually a fungus.
They're not a nut.
You didn't know that?
I thought they were a legume.
Oh, I don't know. I've heard they're a fungus. That's when they have the You didn't know that? I thought they were a legume. Oh, I don't know. I heard they're a fungus.
That's when they have the...
What is it called?
You didn't know that? Well, I don't know.
That's what you just said.
I know very little about this,
but I'm going to go out on a limb and I'm going to say
that I am almost positive
that peanuts are not a fungus.
I don't know. We should look on your phone
and Google it. We can't do it. We can't cheat. We should look on your phone and Google it. I know, I know. We can't do it.
We can't cheat.
We cannot go on the internet
during an ear biscuit.
But I bet peanuts can get fungus.
No, I think that I,
for some,
I've heard that they're a fungus.
I, whatever.
I think if you spell legume backwards,
it's kind of like fungus.
No, that won't work either.
I think you're reaching.
I'm trying to help you out here.
So you can't have almonds.
I can't have almonds.
Brazil nuts.
You know about how they get Brazil nuts.
Talk about a tree nut.
I mean, this thing, the tree is just in the middle of the rainforest.
And they don't grow them anywhere.
Really?
And the trees are like hundreds of years old, and they have these huge pods that if they fall, they will kill you.
And they fall down, and people collect them.
And it's all, every Brazil nut that you eat in one of those packs of trail mix or whatever
you get it, it was from some tree in the rainforest.
It is not harvested like a normal thing.
It is in a freaking rainforest.
Wow.
But you'll never know about that because you're allergic to it.
I will never know about that.
And also, what is it?
Is it macadamia nuts?
I'm trying to think.
Cachios.
No, cachios, actually.
Did you know they have to be steamed to be opened?
So they're susceptible to bacteria and fungus.
Because to get them out of their shell.
You've got to get the peanuts out of them.
Sure.
You have to steam them to get them open.
Because you can't just get them out.
Yeah.
So did you ever have one of those really bad reactions
where you had to get the EpiPen and stuff?
I usually get, no, I've never had to do EpiPen,
but I'll get hives.
I'm the one that I get it.
It's weird.
It'll start more where my stomach will start itching,
so it's always around my stomach,
and then I get these red kind of hives just up in my body.
It happens randomly.
I'll be at a restaurant, and I'll be like,
oh, don't know what they put in there,
but my body don't like it.
Yeah, I got hives once in my crotch.
And I went to the doctor.
Are you sure it was hives?
It was, I swear.
I wish you guys could see the look.
I'm fine.
I wish you could see the look on Rhett's face. His jaw was just dropped over. Yeah, I didn't know about this. So, Brittany, tell. I'm fine. Yeah, I wish you could see the look on Red's face.
His jaw was just dropped open.
Yeah, I didn't know about this.
So, Brittany, tell me about your past.
I got hives in my crotch.
Yeah, I went to the doctor to get it checked out.
I'm going to keep going with this story.
I want to hear it.
Oh, my.
It was one of those intern assistant persons,
and they got me to drop my pants and took a look at it,
this guy, and it was really awkward.
And then the doctor comes in and I'm like, okay.
I tell him the whole story again
and I start dropping my pants.
I don't need to see.
And he just says, here's some antibiotics or something
and he didn't look at it.
And I was like, well, I'm glad he didn't look at it.
But then I felt bad that he didn't look at it. Yeah I was like, well, I'm glad he didn't look at it, but then I felt bad that he didn't look at it.
Yeah, like, what?
So why can't you take a look?
Was it a fungus?
It was, I think we determined that.
It can't happen.
We did not determine what caused the hives,
and it was hives, for the record.
So the doctor just said, well, it's probably stress.
It had never happened before, never happened again.
Really?
So, yeah.
Oh, my.
There's so many jokes that you can make about that.
I did not mean to bring this up.
How did this happen?
I don't know.
This is supposed to be about allergies.
Okay, so you're allergic to anything else?
No, I mean, just all, like, you know, sometimes, like, the perfumes that are really strong.
I'll be at, like, the post office, and some woman will have this brand of perfume and I will just be dying.
I'll have to walk out and my eyes will start streaming.
So I'm just sensitive to awful perfumes sometimes.
Nothing ever life-threatening.
No, it's all minor.
So your brother changed the trajectory of your life from an early age just to kind of save him from swelling.
Exactly.
The thing is, especially when kids are that young, it's dangerous.
Because if he kept swelling up, what if his allergy gets more severe and his throat starts to close when he gets stung?
You know what I mean?
It's not.
You need to get kids out of that.
And it was happening regularly, I guess.
Yeah.
To the point that they had to move because he was just getting eaten alive.
And so how old were you when you moved to Arizona?
One and a half.
One and a half.
So your first memories are in the desert.
I do.
My first memories are like,
we had that,
all I remember it was this real,
well, we moved to Sedona.
So it was 4,500 like feet is the elevation.
So it's like an hour and a half from Phoenix.
Phoenix is like desert.
So where we moved to in Sedona,
it's all red rocks, red dirt.
It's like known for being a tourist city
like they have 22,000 people that live there now I think there was like maybe 2,500 or 5,000 we
moved there and it was definitely a retirement town and now it's just a full-blown tourist town
like they get like eight million tourists a year or something crazy it's beautiful to see the red
rocks you'll have to google it Sedona like it's just it's it's been in a lot of movies like it's
just it's just gorgeous but there's nothing to just, it's been in a lot of movies. Like, it's just gorgeous.
But there's nothing to do.
Like, it's a small tourist town.
So, what did you do?
What was life like, like the grade school Brittany growing up?
Oh, God.
I mean, I think that, I mean, the good thing about it, I mean, the bad thing was there
weren't a lot of kids.
And any kids that you met or friends that you made were usually tourists and they're
gone in a week.
So, I had a lot of friends that were, like, from New York tucson from phoenix from other places that would come in the summer
for like a week or come i mean i think that was really hard um but uh the britney young uh because
there was nothing to do we spent a lot of time hiking and we go to the creek a lot like people
don't know this but um there's a place called slide rock and the locals know not to go there
because it gets shut down like multiple times a year for your like a coli bacteria because people like go to the
water so all the locals go down to red rock crossing which is like cleaner so i spent a lot
of my summers just like playing in the water and we had one movie theater that's upstream of where
the tourist tape dumps in the water it's downstream and way downstream like it's all rinsed out by
then because like it's way, like many miles away
from where they all
are doing their business
in the water.
But no, when we moved there,
there was a place called Bayless.
It was Bashes and Payless
put together.
It was kind of like
your drugstore
and your pharmacy
and your like grocery store
in one store.
Okay.
And then there's a place
called the Flickershack
and there was this old guy
that hated kids
but had the only movie theater
in town,
hated kids.
It was called the Flicker Shack.
The Flicker Shack.
A movie, Flicker, right?
They would only play one movie at a time and it would be there forever.
And it was just the one theater.
We didn't have until I was in high school,
was there actually, Harkins came in with seven theaters
and that was like the biggest thing
to ever happen to Sedona.
When we got seven theaters,
that was like,
that was huge.
Oh, yeah.
So you spent your whole,
I mean,
your whole childhood there in Arizona.
And well,
like my mom,
she was a wheat farmer,
so they had,
she grew up with horses,
and I wanted to get a horse,
so probably about like five or six,
I think I bugged her enough years.
I got into horseback riding,
so I grew up doing, at first I did like Western Pleasure, think I bugged her enough years she I got into horseback riding so I grew up doing at first I did like um western pleasure and I did some jumping like you know
English what is what now western pleasure it's like it's just like western pleasure yeah it's not
there's a place in Van Nuys I think it's called that oh snap um no no it's um it's like basically
like when you see people like they they like you know people at shows where they just walk, trot, and canter.
And you turn around and walk, trot, and canter.
When they're picking up their feet like this.
That's gated.
That's different.
It's a little bit different.
They'll be like Tennessee walkers and stuff.
But it's just like when you walk, you trot.
Show horses.
Exactly, yeah.
You're not roping anything.
No, no.
I didn't do any barrel racing or roping or any of that.
Did you jump over any of those sticks?
I did. I jumped over sticks. What's that called? Jumping.
Okay, great. But then I got into dressage pretty heavily, which is like, it's really boring. It's
in the Olympics. It's the most, it's really boring to watch and really hard to do. It's kind of like
the easiest way to explain it is like ballet on horseback. So it's like you have certain letters
and you do certain things at certain letters. So like a 20 meter circle would be like a little circle in a little area or you
you know changes would be like changing lead like from like like left lead to right lead it's like
it's it's really boring to watch and really hard to do yes yeah so i like i rode horses right all
up all the way up to 18 i was about 18 and I grew up doing like sports and playing tennis I was a total tomboy like really like major tomboy well my brother was 17 months older than me and I
idolized him so it was like whatever he wanted to do like I was I wanted to do so like you know we
play video games together we always like be around each other we always just got along so what kind
of school situation are we talking about here um school situation was it was really strange because
it was such a small town and like
Arizona is like second worst in the nation funding for education.
So kindergarten was, kindergarten was good.
And then they pulled us out in first grade.
We weren't learning anything.
It was like nap time playing with clay.
So my mom actually started a school in our basement and then I was called Children's
Open School and I went to the school there for two years till third grade. And they hired- Started a school in your basement? Started a school in our basement. So I was called children's open school and I went to the school there for
two years till third grade and they hired a school in your basement started school like a
homeschool yeah a homeschool situation and then we had um 15 students they paid tuition they got
a gifted teacher to come in her name was uh I think it was Brenda Whitecoff if I remember correctly
but yeah it was two years I went to school in my basement but it was it was honestly it was great
and I mean they opened up the school to like, you know, they, they had an interview process
with the parents, but it was like, um, the parents had to do with the stuff with the
kids at least once a week.
And then once a month there was a group activity where we went camping or we, um, we were studying
like runes and we went up to Flagstaff, Arizona and we did excavating.
Like we got to go into like where the NAU, like the dig sites and like, you know, dig
up pottery and whatever and, and all that jazz.
So it was like, we went to like Lowell Observatory pottery and whatever and and all that jazz so it was like we went to like low observatory and stayed the night like it was
it was really cool like it was a very like the school was very interactive and it was an interesting
teaching method because you um could do anything you wanted all day but all there was to do was
educational activities and you had to do one thing that had to do with math or one thing that had to
do with science but all the toys all the activities the activities were learning. And there was a, there was one teacher who was there kind of making all
this happen. Yeah. And then I think it was about third grade that I just, I really missed, like,
I wanted to, I want to be around the kids. And my mom's like, I'm just gonna send you to school,
socialize. So I went back into school system at third grade and then just, you know, stayed in
public schools up until high school. But I ended up switching. I got, it was pretty, I had pretty bad experiences with bullying when I was younger.
So I had to switch schools. So tell us about that. What, how old were you when that happened?
Oh God, it started, it just, I mean, my, both my brother and I were just like blonde hair,
blue eyes, just like, you know, like really tan. We're just nice kids. But my, because my dad was
an airline pilot and at that time in Sedona, was just um everyone thought we were like you know filthy rich and it's like no we're
just we're just middle class but like the median income was not it was not what it is now like now
it's like multi-million dollar houses everywhere but at that point like you know they said that
my parents like overbuilt and they just built this just like nice simple house like oh you
overbuilt for Sedona so everyone like all like all the parents, I think a lot
of it starts with the parents. The parents like were, you know, thought my parents were rich.
So then the kids thought I was rich because my mom, like, you know, she would like, Oh,
my clothes were just from like banana Republic, you know, or something or the gap, like nothing,
nothing crazy. But I always had just like nice clothes or I don't know. So the, the, just,
I had a lot of issues with like girls. I had, it was really funny in kindergarten. I had a boy that kept ripping my dresses and my dad's like,
um, he's showed me, he's like, next time he does it, just punch him. So he showed me like,
took me to his bed. We practice. So the next day he went to rip my dress and I punched him so hard
that it turned black underneath his eyes. Both eyes? Both eyes. I actually, yes, both eyes. And,
you tried to shove his nose into his brain, didn't you?
I must have.
That's what your dad told you.
My mom, well, they hauled a principal, and then my parents had to come in for a teacher
meeting.
I was in kindergarten.
Had to come in for a parent-teacher meeting.
And we were at the grocery store that night, and this guy, this little kid was his mom.
He's like, Mom, that's the girl that decked the boy at school today.
My whole system was so funny.
So I'm confused.
Who was the bully?
Well, he kept ripping my clothes.
Okay, got it.
But I was left alone up until I left school like that.
My dad was like, I would literally come home every day with ripped clothes.
And my dad's like, just deck him.
My dad's old school.
He's, again, a farmer.
He grew up in California.
So my parents are like, they're like from the mentality, like you step on someone's
property, shoot them.
You know what I mean?
Like if you're not supposed to be there, like they're like, they're all, they're literally
like, they're, they're just, I don't know.
They're from a different planet.
Well, if nobody was stepping in and, you know, if the teacher wasn't stepping in.
No, we tried that.
And the kid would like, would keep ripping my clothes.
My dad's just like, just duck him.
He never did it again, did he?
Nope.
I was left alone up until, and then, but then, I mean, clothes. My dad's just like, just deck him. He never did it again, did he? Nope.
I was left alone.
But then, I mean, I left school.
And then people thought I was like the... So even in high school, I worked really hard and I saved and I got an older BMW.
And I was making the payments.
I was working all summer to make the payments on the car.
I would come out and people would write spoiled B-I-T-C-H on my car.
I literally wrote it on my car. Well, I would come out and like, people would write like spoiled, like B-I-T-C-H on my car. Like I literally like wrote it on my car.
Like spray paint type stuff?
No, they took like, you know, it was dirty.
They just like, they basically scraped it in
with their fingers.
I mean, but it's, it scratched the paint,
but like the stuff like that happened all the time.
But I feel like, honestly,
I always feel like it was a blessing
because it just made me stronger.
And I think that I'm the last person to judge people
because I was judged my whole life. What do you think the, was the lowest point? I mean, I think what probably
was really hard. There was this, um, this girl that was, um, we finally got this family that
moved in on the other side where we were at in sky mountain. Um, there was this auction where
this house was foreclosed and this family bought it, this doctor. And he had like three, it was,
um, three daughters and a son. And i became friends with the oldest daughter and she had a sleepover and i ended up being like the first
person to fall asleep and um while i was sleeping they poured nail polish on me so i woke up in the
middle of the night and my skin i was like what's going on like oh you knocked it off the counter
blah blah i came out later they poured it on me because my mom like went you know went back after
them but i literally had to call my mom go home she had to go get nail polish remover my skin. My skin was bleeding. It was really bad. So, I mean, I have, but I had stuff
like that all the time. I had, I don't know, just like girls pulling my hair, girls. And I, I am
like, I'm not a person that's, I didn't do anything. Like they just would just pick me out.
So, I mean, it got really bad in junior high. So I ended up having to go to a separate school
that was in a big park, which is like a, it's like 45 minutes away. So I had to ride the bus
45 minutes and then ride it an hour back every day to go to school but i mean it made things it
got a little bit better but then i had a girl at that school the problem was that i it was it's
just so random um that's when i really started getting into theater and acting and they had
missoula children's theater is like a traveling uh thing that comes to town once a year it's
really cool and everyone comes like from sedona cottonwoodwood, Camp Verde, any of the flag staff.
They'll come and audition.
It's like a week long thing where like they put on a play in a week basically.
So they had everyone wants roles in it.
Everyone wants to do it because it's really freaking cool.
Like they bring the sets.
It's just all the costumes.
It's amazing what they do in one week.
But they had for the Wizard of Oz, they had auditions and out of,
I think it was 550 people or whatever,
I got the role of Dorothy.
And then that caused a lot of problems
because I just had girls that just didn't like me
for whatever reason.
And that was at the new school.
So it's just girls.
And we're talking about a time before,
I mean, today there's all this-
Anti-bullying stuff there wasn't, yeah. all this anti-bullying campaigns. And so there's
documentaries about it. There's movements, there's organizations. This is before any of that. So,
you know, how do you, what do you think about the way that things are handled today? And do
you wish that somebody had kind of stepped in and helped you? Or you're like, you know what,
this actually made me who I am.
I'm really glad that it, I'm glad it happened to me,
but I don't want it to happen to anybody else.
Does that make sense?
Like, I think it made me really tough because I mean, I moved to Hollywood
when I was 18 by myself.
I went on 150 student film auditions
before I booked a student film.
And it's not that hard.
You know, sometimes there's like two people auditioning.
It's not.
And I'm like, and I know I'm not doing a bad job. Like I know some of them really well. So, I mean, I think I
was so used to like people attacking me or rejection or whatever growing up that it just
felt normal. Like it was like, okay, well this is, this is life. Let's like try. I got so used to
knowing that you just have to get up and try again and get up and try again. Cause like
my mom made me go to school. Like she made me like, you know, go and she didn't let me, I mean, she would give me what
she called sanity days. Like once a month she would say that I had like, you know, a doctor's
appointment or something. She's given me the day off. So she let me stay home. But, but it was
basically like torture every day. Yeah. I would come home crying. It got better when I got into
high school. Cause that's when I got really bad acne. And then the girls started being nice to me because my skin was all broken out. So then I
was like, oh, okay. Then I wasn't so much of a target and being in high school, like by that
point there had been some more people that moved into the town that like, quote unquote, had money.
And again, my parents were middle class, but it was just like, most people were very low income.
So to them, they thought my parents were like filthy rich so i think that was when like high
school actually got a little bit better and i think two people start to mature a little bit
more and i think that the difference between high school and grade school is grade school
they're gonna say things to your face high school will say it to you behind your back which i prefer
a lot more like talk about me behind your back like just leave me alone i don't care what you
say about me like just let me eat my lunch so and your brother who you were close to yeah was like a year ahead of you
in school maybe two yeah and so was was he was was he a resource for you he um like i think in
high school it was good because you know we kind of like you start to form like i hate to say it's
like a posse like you have people that you hang out with and there's protection in numbers so
when you're around like you know we had all like you know we had land parties at the house and that's when I started to become like anything
more my friends were guys than girls because girls girls can be catty sometimes guys are more fun the
things that I want to do are usually guy things like I want to go to the theme parks I want to go
to movies I'm not saying all girls are like that but just like it just it just seemed to work out
that way that I wanted while they were having their dune land party I wanted to hang out and
eat pizza with them so like that it just ended up working out but um I mean my brother
experienced a little bit of the just the bullying like he had a guy like throw a burrito at him and
like almost took out his eye like just like no that was that was in grade school no I mean it's
just it was like it's interesting like everyone has their own experiences and have gone through
like way worse but that's you know Sedona is a very interesting town you know why though it's so beautiful I have this theory that people move
there thinking it's going to solve all their problems and then they realize they're wherever
they go their problems follow them so you end up having this gorgeous place with all these crazy
miserable people that's what that's really what Sedona is it's all the all we call them the like
there's all the nut jobs like they're all nut all nutty. Well, do you think that the, you know, the bullying that you were experiencing, you know, you said that you started theater and you started trying to be an entertainer.
Were those related?
No, I think that I, well, I, this is, when I was four years old, I saw the MSUSA pageant and I literally wore a bathing suit for four years of my life.
Like, my mom let me.
She didn't care.
She's like, so, I mean, I had to wear like regular clothes to school,
but like any other time, like in the winter we have pictures, I have me with like tights and
the bathing suit and whatever. Like, I just, I don't know. I, I think I always like wanted to
be a performer without even really knowing what that was. I never like, I haven't aspired to be
like Miss America or anything, but like, um, there's this place called Tulaka Pocky that's
like in, um, Sedona and there's like a little platform outside of one of the restaurants. And my brother would go,
here's Brittany. And I'd go up there and sing and dance. And now there's a sign there that says no
performing on the platform. That's because of me, because I would like literally people giving
pennies and whatever. And it was pull away from the businesses and they're getting really annoyed
because I mean, I was a little girl, like it was obnoxious. I was loud, but like it drew attention
from what their businesses were.
It's interesting because you discover yourself as a tomboy
and you're interested in things that you end up having more guy friends
than girlfriends.
It kind of plays into the bullying environment that I guess you were in.
But at the same time, you've got this want to be a beauty queen type of,
I'm in a bathing suit.
No, but you don't understand.
It was just, I think that I like to do all the guy things but i've always been this way like i like hair and i
like makeup but i'll go camping in a heartbeat like that's just i think i have a lot of interest
so but i think mentally like mentality wise so even now like my my all my best friends are guys
i mean when eventually i do get married all my bridesmaids are going to be male. That's going to be interesting.
Yeah, and I think that's...
I think that's not allowed.
It's going to have to be.
I'm sorry.
That's how it's going to work.
Are you going to make them wear dresses?
No.
They'll just think and wear their suits
and be them sassy selves.
It's just how it's going to work out.
Okay, so you said you moved to Hollywood at 18. Yes. So as high school
was finishing up. Well, I graduated a year early. So I got an art scholarship for drawing. Like
it was so fun. I had an academic scholarship to Northern Arizona University, which is like staff.
But at the last minute I got a scholarship that was like partial tuition to ASU. And I was like,
I don't know. I went with my gut.
And I'm like, you know what?
I'm not going to do well in that cold weather.
I'm going to go to Arizona State.
So I ended up going to ASU for two years.
And so I'm sorry.
I moved here when I was 19.
I turned 19 the month I moved here.
I moved in August.
Okay.
So I went into college at 17.
For drawing?
Yeah, for drawing.
So I was in art classes the first year
doing you know all that stuff and but you didn't say i'm a drawing major did you oh god no i
majoring in drawing no i was in the art storm which is like and it was called mcclintock and
it's like this it's right on campus and it's all it's all like architecture students dance students
theater students and acting like you know like well it's a theater and students, dance students, theater students, and acting like, you know,
like, well, let's see, theater and art.
And it is the craziest party dorm on ASU.
It is nuts.
And dramatic.
No, oh my God.
Like, you don't understand.
Like people, people,
someone flooded the dorm one night
where they're like the rec area is
and lit toilet paper on fire.
Like stuff like that happened on a weekly basis.
I got to the point where I didn't get out of bed
for the fire alarms,
which is extremely illegal. Cause I was like, I'm, I have to get up at 6am for class. I'm not, I can't deal with this. I'm to the point where I didn't get out of bed for the fire alarms which is extremely illegal
because I was like,
I have to get up at 6 a.m.
for class.
I can't deal with this.
I'm just going to go to sleep.
I just put the pillow and stay.
I'll get up when I feel the heat.
Exactly,
because it's just another false alarm.
It's just someone else doing something.
Something crazy.
Exactly.
And artsy-fartsy.
Yeah,
no,
ASU is the kind of campus
that you see,
like,
they're not supposed to haze
for like their,
for their sororities
and fraternities, but you see the naked people with like clown haze for like their uh for their sororities and
fraternities but you see the naked people with like clown things running down the middle of like
the i forgot what the name of the street like all the time like you see the most crazy stuff
so at some point during this process though you were like i don't want to be a drawer i never i
never wanted to be i think like i always wanted i always wanted to do acting but my mom like you
know wanted me to try college and she's always been super supportive but she's afraid just because you guys know this being in LA it's a hard city to be in and I think she didn't
want me to be in an industry that was so so like so challenging and so heartbreaking and she just
wanted to protect me from that so I think I just prayed long enough and like one day she woke up
and she's like she realized she said she's just something like God told me it was like you know
I'm the one holding her back and then she moment she she told me, she's like, just go to LA.
I moved like a month after that.
Like I wanted to leave right then and there, but I finished out my finals and then move.
After sophomore year.
Yeah.
It was right after my finals.
I moved.
So she gave you her blessing.
Yeah.
And your dad, what about him?
Oh, he was always in.
My dad was the kind of guy that was like, whatever you want, just go for it.
I support you. Like, you know, it sounds great, Brittany. Do it. Like that's guy that was like, whatever you want, just go for it. I support you.
Like, you know, it sounds great, Brittany.
Do it.
Like, that's my mom's like, well, we need to think about this.
Like that.
If they rip your dress, punch them.
End of story.
Exactly.
If you want to go to LA, go to LA.
That was my father.
So what do you do when you're 19?
You're a 19-year-old girl and you're moving to Los Angeles.
How does that work?
I always thought of it as like a business where I came in.
I moved here with very much of the business mentality.
I had this thing.
I was like, I'm not here to make friends.
I'm here to work.
So I bought this book called Acting is Everything by Judy Kerr.
And I bookmarked every single little thing on it.
And I got into classes right away.
So I saved some money while I was in college.
I was taking scene study classes and commercial classes. And I was, you know, I'd save some money while I was in college. So I had, I was taking scene study classes
and commercial classes
and I basically treated it
like a business.
I went to every single audition
and it didn't matter what it was
because I figured
it was audition experience.
And I just,
I did everything I possibly could.
I did like tons of actor,
like, you know,
the casting director workshops
and I went to producers a lot.
Like I went to producers
on like Ugly Betty
and Go More Girls
and Chuck and a bunch of shows
and cast directors seeing me.
And it would get so close.
It would get down to the six people.
Because what people don't understand,
there's auditions and then there's the producer callback.
So on the producer callback,
they've already had 10,000 submissions.
They've probably auditioned 100 people.
They'll narrow it down to six or eight or four
to bring to producers to show them.
I would get so close on this stuff and then not get it.
And it was driving me so crazy.
So one day there was this notice on Now Casting
for this company called Operator 11.
And this guy named, I think his name was Josh Harris,
he took his last $3 million and he created this company
that was like live video broadcasting.
And they were looking for people
that wanted to do their own shows.
So at that
point that i thought about i'm like oh well you know would it be funny if i did this like clueless
life coaching character named ron anthony tanner so i went into the um and pitched them my idea
and like made out with my hand in the audition and like she's crazy we love her so i started out
with your hand i made out with my hand like i had a whole like the whole spiel about like ronda's
like um ronda kissing techniques or something and like literally made out with my hand in character and they were dying
laughing.
So it worked.
So,
um,
I started doing a show with them and then I,
I think it was,
I got up to like,
it was like at that point,
this was before,
this was probably eight years ago or nine years ago.
I was getting like a hundred thousand,
150,000 views an episode on my stuff.
But what was the outlet again?
This was,
it was a live
video broadcasting company called operator 11 and it was um it got i came to work one day and the
doors were just chain closed they ran out of money but it was in it was a website yeah it was a
website yeah it was like a like kind of think of like um you know people they have like live stream
now or like it's kind of it was like one of the first kind of like live stream you stream blog tv
type thing but i did it in a different way. I would pre-film all
my sketches and I
would go live for a
little bit but I would
play my pre-film
sketches so I turn it
into kind of like a
show where I would do
you know I would intro
it and outro it but
the middle part was all
pre-done.
Are they still online
somewhere?
I have the FLV files
and they're awful.
This is like what
eight and a half years
ago, eight years ago like it's not like this is like what, eight and a half years ago, eight years ago?
Like it's not,
like this is back in the day.
It was when still things were what,
four, three,
like aspect ratio.
Like it's not.
320 by 240.
Oh yeah.
And like when we keyed things out,
we thought it looked really good
and it looked awful.
This is like before,
you know,
come on,
this is like,
I don't even know if After Effects
was out yet
or like,
you know,
everyone was doing stuff
in Final Cut. But this is how you were getting paid. I was getting paid, I was't even know if After Effects was out yet or like, you know, everyone was doing stuff in Final Cut.
But this is how you were getting paid.
I was getting paid.
I was getting paid some.
I, to the extra money, I did a lot of promo modeling work, which is, oh my God.
What is that?
It's so hard.
It's basically like you on your feet for 15, 18 hours a day.
And it's like, you know.
Modeling clothes or?
Or it would be like a promo.
Like, you know how, let's say that you're like um you go to like any like volleyball event and let's say there's
kellogg's is there and they have a bunch of like attractive people walking around with like boxes
of kellogg's like the new cereal that's it's called promotional modeling so i um walking around a live
event with toting some sort of product yeah but what i worked a lot of the because it's perfect
because i'm pasty white,
I did the AVP Pro Tour
so for volleyball.
So like that,
like that goes all over
all the beaches
and that out in the sun
for 15 hours.
So beach volleyball.
Beach volleyball,
handing out sunscreen samples
for like 15 hours
at a time.
Well,
you're tall.
I'm short
in comparison
to those people.
How tall are you?
I'm six feet.
Yeah,
I mean,
okay. No, but I mean, I felt at home. I was like, oh my God, like this is the first time in my life that I'm short in comparison to those people. How tall are you? I'm six feet. Yeah, I mean, okay.
No, but I mean, I felt at home.
I was like, oh my God,
this is the first time in my life that I'm short.
Like, everyone's tall in beach volleyball.
That's hard work.
It was, and I think the hardest part was that it took a while to get paid on stuff.
Sometimes it'd be like five months
before you get paid because it's not,
it's like you get paid really well.
It just takes time to get paid.
So I also worked out with my roommate where I was a dog walker.
So I would walk her dog in exchange for money off my rent.
So I get like $600 a month off my rent.
So I did.
And then for all my classes, I would paint my, like I painted my one teacher's fence.
Like I would pull weeds.
I'd take care of her house when it was gone.
Like I would literally work out with my teachers where I would work for them to be able to take lessons for cheaper.
So I did anything you could possibly imagine to pay the bills.
So the live stream job started from just going to yet another audition.
Yeah, yeah.
Which you kind of, at a certain point, you just, you said you were kind of taking all auditions just to see what would catch.
Well, because I mean, when I first, like, this is not so much how it is now, but like, well, I mean, it might be.
But like a lot of actors when they first moved to LA will do a lot of student films because sometimes those go to
festivals and they do well or they're you know all the future you know directors so I did a lot
of student films like when I finally did book one with LA film school ended up doing 18 in a row
yes because what happened is I would be on set and then like someone there would have their
thesis project coming up and like and I would just hand out my cards to everybody and i was like you know i was nice and i worked hard and
i did my stuff and i left so i ended up doing like i think it was 18 in a row and i couldn't use one
of them because the footage was all terrible because it's all students so yeah i did i did
a couple for usc i did a couple afi ones just a lot of student films but the so the live stream
thing how long did you do that before you showed up and it
was just like doors were barred?
Six months.
I worked my butt off for six months.
Like, and I think I had on, on their thing, I had like a hundred thousand subscribers,
like followers on the, their site.
Wow.
Cause I used MySpace.
I would go on MySpace and I would spend all day long talking to people.
And I had this whole thing that I was like, well.
In character.
In character.
And what was the name of the character?
Rhonda Anthony Tanner.
So it was rat. It was like rat coaching. I want to exterminate the pests from real life thing. So like, but I mean, my mom always says, if you can build an audience with
Rhonda, you can build an audience with anything. Cause it was a very weird character, but that,
um, that was right when lonely girl 15, like revealed that she wasn't a real person. Do you
remember when that was, was a real person? Excuse me. Um, that's right. When I started,
she wasn't a real person. It was exactly. Yeah, exactly. So the fact that she like,
you know, was an actress, that's when that, when that all blew up is when I started YouTube.
Cause my mom's like, well, Brittany, she's like, that was really, I was really angry,
really upset because I put six months of my life into this. I thought I finally had something going,
you know, I, you know, I thought like when you come to LA, it's very much where like the mentality of you need to take classes to learn how to do anything I don't know if you
guys know that but like you need to take a class to learn how to direct you need to take a class
to learn how to write you take a class because it's all there's no limits to the way you can
spend your money here you know this so I think it was really good for me because like people at the
studio taught me final cut and then I bought a green screen I just started writing so I almost got to like become a filmmaker without having to pay money or go to class or it's like I got just
to learn from doing it and like that was the best possible experience was just to be able to just
try it and make mistakes and you started your your first youtube channel as this character
as this character yeah in 2007 and that was based on your mom's advice yeah she's like
she was watching lonely girl yeah no she just she saw something in the news because that she's like
britney this girl is now you know getting tv stuff from her youtube channel like and i kept you know
what i kept hearing at the cast director workshops is like you have to be you know co-star to get
the guest star roles you have to be a guest star to get any reoccurring or serious regular you have
to get any serious regular roles before you'll be up for pilots like they had this
whole pecking order and they kept saying like you have to be a name you have to be a name you have
to be a name and i'm like well what if your name online would that make a difference like you know
so i thought maybe if i created something online i read this really um really good article by this
casting director named bonnie gillespie and she's like you can either keep chasing these directors
and chasing these cast director casting directors and chasing these
producers or you create something and people come to you so that really got me thinking i'm like
okay i need to you know i've been here in la for four years like busting my butt nothing's
major has happened like i've gotten close on some things um you know so this was like this was like
my shot to do something.
What's the closest thing
you got to
where we know something?
No, I mean,
I just like,
just like a lot of like,
just a lot of like
co-star roles.
Because it seemed big
at the time.
They were a big opportunity
for you.
Oh yeah,
there was an NBC pilot
that I got pretty close on
but they never ended up
shooting it.
I got cast as the girl
and then it just fell through.
So I mean,
that was like the closest
I got to anything.
So Lonely Girl 15
was the way in to start a YouTube account for you. Yeah, I literally, I just saw her like, that was like the closest I got to anything. So Lonely Girl 15 was the way in to start a YouTube account for you.
Yeah.
I literally, I just saw her like, I was like, okay, like is she, you know, maybe if I create
something online that would open up doors, it's like all I like, I just love acting.
So it's like, you know, any, any possible way, like I'm the kind of person like I'm
willing to put in the work and you guys too, like, I don't care if I have to edit 20, you
know, 20 hours in two days or whatever it is. I mean, as long as it's a good product and,
you know, I'm getting into like, you know, do what I love and it's worth it.
So you just, the first thing you did was you just moved that character over. Hey,
I've got a hundred thousand followers over here. I'm going to start a YouTube channel.
How did, how was that transition?
It was, it started out where i like um in the first month
i was getting about like 5 000 views an episode by month two i was getting like 10 000 views
and what year this was 2007 okay yeah so then like then on average my average then after like
you know i think it was i i did that when i used to respond to every single message and comment
like i literally got carpal tunnel in my wrists i was responding like 8 000 comments a week i was
insane i turned just turn it in my full-time job i was like i'm just gonna and then the partner program came along and i was like oh
my god yay i think i had 3 000 subscribers when i applied to the partner program and got accepted
and that was so nerve-wracking just remember back then because like if you were denied then you had
to wait like six months again to apply do you remember that okay this is like i didn't know
that's how it worked yeah you have to if you were denied you had to wait six months to apply again so um when i applied i got accepted and i was like yeah i'm
a youtube partner oh my god um yeah so then i started doing stuff with um ronda but then i was
on that channel for i think it was about two years and that's when i met shane like shane was watching
my ronda stuff and he thought that i was actually ronda and when he found out that i was i think i
put out one that was like 10 facts about me.
And I decided I would finally show people like,
and I think it did really well on my,
on my channel.
It's like,
Oh my gosh,
she's acting.
But it was the same channel.
Same channel.
So this was like you saying,
this is a character.
Exactly.
And was that like a bombshell for people?
It was for Shane.
For a lot of people.
No,
for Shane it was.
Cause he like,
like this is Shane's words,
not mine.
He's like,
Oh my gosh, she's not retarded. Like, he like like this is shane's words not mine he's like oh my god she's not retarded like he was like these are shane's
words not mine um so he was like he's like oh my god so then you like we um i think we started
messaging each other back and forth because again i was watching i watched 50 000 videos in my first
year like you know youtube used to track the video views that you'd watch it would show you
the number of views you have watched. The amount of videos.
Yeah.
So I watched 50,000 videos in the first year.
What?
Because I was leaving comments.
Like, just like, I figured, I literally thought, I mean, the best way to form a community is
to go out and, you know, like make friends and watch stuff and be supportive.
And I would leave really nice comments.
Like if someone was singing video, I'd be like, oh my God, you have a really good voice.
Or I'd try to be really positive.
Did you invent the phrase sub for sub?
No. Is that you? God, no. No, I god no no i watched your video watch mine it was no i never did that the only person i ever got blocked by was um brats and beretta yeah it's so funny i ran into
them at the youtube space i'm like you guys know you blocked my channel because i used to go um
every day on to like lisa nova and whatever and i'd leave a comment on their channel page well
you went on our channel too.
Probably.
No, I remember.
Was it the weird eye photo?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I did.
I was like, oh gosh, who is this?
I didn't block you.
You don't remember this?
I do not remember it.
I was dedicated, man.
Because you could go to someone's channel.
I mean, you can still comment on somebody's channel now,
but it's basically hidden.
You don't see it, yeah.
This is a front and center default thing.
The latest person to comment on a channel, and a lot
of people wouldn't do it, so it would stay up there a while.
And you'd do it a
couple of times. I would. But in character.
Exactly. 100% in character. You were in character.
It was all like sparkles and rainbows. Yep. All in character.
Yeah. And I thought you were
that girl.
And I was like, I'm a B-rat.
B-rat needs to I mean multiple times
it's kind of embarrassing but not because it was my past so like like I've I think I've learned a
lot but I mean you know it's like you you just you see what works so Shane whenever you did that
on Shane's channel he had seen your videos or him and Kate used to watch
my videos make fun of me like I was
like you know Shane always has that person that he loves
to watch for a laugh and I was the person
that he would watch and be like oh my god
she's mentally insane
so like we started messaging each other
back and forth it's like remember YouTube had a share button too
and you were in character no
this was like this was after character like this is I put
out that he contacted me after he's like what oh my god he said he even told he's like kate she's a
real person it's not ron's thing i don't even know so um we used to message each other back
and forth on actually myspace because myspace was still very prevalent then so he was like oh
is the share button broken for you i'm like yeah he's like we should hang out sometime i'm like
yeah so this is the first time popular was was shane was getting like i think he had like 25 000
subscribers and he's getting like 50 000 views an episode and i had 12 000 subscribers and he had
8 000 so that's when we became friends he like ate like we're just small channels so we met up at um
third street promenade with kate and it was the first time i've ever met anyone online like i
don't do that like that's it scares me like hey but I just
knew we'd be we'd be like we talked online I'm like he seems normal and I was kind of hanging
out with this like group of guys that was just really strange it was like I was like all of
their in a strictly platonic way I was like all they're treating me all like their girlfriend and
it was so strange I was like I need to get out of this I need to make some new friends like how
specifically were they treating you well they would just like text me and call me all the time
and be like, like super like
flirty.
And it was just this whole group of guys.
And it was weird.
It was just really strange.
So I like, I mean, they were dating all other girls, but then like, like they would get
jealous.
I was just really strange.
Like, I was like, I'm not dating you guys.
We're just all friends.
What is going on?
So I ended up, I was like, it was at that time in life that I needed some new friends.
So Shane and I, I think then we went, Shane, Kate and I I went to Six Flags and I remember we went to Whole Foods later it's
like oh he's like oh could you ever play an emo character and I'm like yeah what do you want me
to say I was just like really dry like all throughout the supermarket he's like brilliant
so he wrote it and then we did emo breakup and then that that went pretty big and then we did
uh how to get big on YouTube and that and that I got big trouble with my roommate because like
Shane like filmed on her bed on the one seat.
Like I did,
I like,
I kind of talked into it,
but it's really funny.
Now we go back and talk about it.
But,
um,
yeah.
So that was like on her bed.
He filmed the,
who wants to say what part of the video?
It's like,
just say it.
No,
it's like,
like he's,
he's doing something very inappropriate to Joe nation on my bed.
Like,
but they like censored it out
on your roommate's bed
on my roommate's bed
yes
and then
she
a co-worker
told her
because the video got like
I don't know
it was a couple million views
and then she goes
I saw your bed
there's two dudes in it
yeah exactly
that's your house
and they're filming
and so it was just really
it was
she wasn't the nicest person,
but still I should have asked her.
That was one of my things going back.
It was a guilt thing.
But it was one of those things where I had no money.
Filming location.
It was bad.
It was bad.
So at some point in this process,
you say, okay,
it's time to kind of develop my own identity.
No, Shane's the one that said,
you need to stop playing Raw Dead.
You need to create a new channel.
Because you can play other characters.
You should create a channel where you play all different things.
And I was like, oh, light bulb.
Duh, that's what I should have done from the beginning
was be myself and play multiple things.
So he's the reason I started.
What year is this?
I think that was four years ago,
four or five for my Brittany Louise Taylor channel.
So then that's when I started forming that one.
So I think it was,
it was because of him that I did it.
And the,
I think the first video I uploaded was like the emo breakup bloopers or
something like for the bloopers from our video.
So,
so did you have a,
you know,
a lot of success early on because you had Shane who was growing in
popularity, who was, you know, you were appearing in his videos. So was it, you had Shane who was growing in popularity
who was, you know,
you were appearing in his videos.
So was it, you know,
you kind of moved quickly?
No, then it was crazy.
I mean, but before that
I'd been on YouTube
for two and a half years.
So like it wasn't like, you know,
it was really weird for me.
I got really excited
when I got 50 subs a day.
Like that was big.
Like, you know, I would,
my goal was like 20 to 30
where I would try to like,
you know, make friends. And I'm like, you know i i at that point i love to keep like a graph i'm
a person that likes like notes and lists okay oh yeah i got like 15 subscribers today yeah then i
would keep like write down every morning what what my subscribers were you were doing your own
analytics in other words basically yeah yeah i was so yeah youtube's nice enough to make that
graph for us now but back then make it
you were doing the lines and everything old school yeah line graphing it so i think that you know
then when we it wasn't really crazy but the thing is like about shane though he would kept doing
shout outs and you tell people like um i remember i did a video of panasonic and he told people to
go say show me your tatas on my video but like show, show me your, yeah. He told, this is so literally,
I have 50,000 comments
of show me your,
yes.
And I was like,
how do I explain this
to Panasonic?
Because,
because your,
your content
is much cleaner.
Like,
you won't say the things
that Shane said now.
You won't relay.
It's different.
Yeah. I think that's why we're friends. We're polar opposites.
Polar opposites.
But we both have good hearts, but he's like, you know, he's like dirty and will say anything.
And I'm like, I'm like, no, I won't say that. I'm still like a little child. Like,
I'm like, my mom will get mad at me.
Well, what kind of audience have you built? Who are the, I mean, is it,
is it girls watching you? It's a different audience than Shane in some ways,
right?
I mean,
in some way,
I think that,
you know,
I've picked up like,
but like most of it's from Shane.
So I have like,
my audience is like 83
or 84% female.
I'm just like,
between the ages of 13 to 24.
So I have all these adorable,
adorable young women.
Like I would say at VidCon,
like people get like,
you know,
they'll come and they'll surround them.
Mine get in a line.
My,
the cute little girls
that get in the line
and they're very polite. Like everyone's like, mine's lying.
I just got a line. Like, they're so cute. Like they all line up. They don't, then they're patient
and they wait their turn. Like they're so cute. How does knowing that that is your audience
impact what you create? I think the best thing for me is like when you start to meet the people
that watch your videos, I think anytime that you're tired or like, you know, you've on your
fourth video that you're editing, like today where I'm like I've edited four videos
today I'm I'm like and I'm still like I'll have to go home and color correct and do more just
deadlines on a couple things it's like when you meet the people and then like there was this one
girl I remember just last VidCon not too long ago she was um came up to me in line and she said she
started crying she's like you left a comment saying I was beautiful and no one's ever told
me that I was beautiful in my whole life.
And she's this gorgeous Asian woman.
I think she was Korean.
Gorgeous, like absolutely gorgeous.
And I'm like, no one had told her that she was beautiful.
Like just the fact that like me leaving a comment
on someone's video could change their life like that.
Like, I think for me, like, I just, I love acting so much
and I love the people more.
So like, I don't know.
I've always been like, I don't really get all stressed out
when things happen with YouTube with numbers or things break. Like as long as there's someone watching, like I just love the people more. So like, I don't know. I've always been like, I don't really get all stressed out when things happen with YouTube
with numbers or things break.
Like as long as there's someone watching,
like I just love the kids.
And I think something that
just a casual viewer of yours
may not realize is how technical you are
in your approach that you're,
I mean, you pretty much do everything
on your channel that you do the music.
You may get someone to produce it
or sweeten it or whatever.
Yeah, I have.
Editing and all of that is something that i take hands on right i've been i just started to hire i'm training and she's brilliant i've been training someone to help me
just with editing on like the beauty videos just because it's just like you know an extra eight
videos a month that i just need help on so but i mean yeah i mean i write and produce and pick up
the props and film and do everything.
You're very technically minded when it comes to those things.
I love it, though.
I have some of my friends that are like, oh, I just want to act, just want to whatever.
And I'm like, I love every part of the filmmaking process.
I love the shot list.
I love filming.
I love editing.
I love acting.
I love the finished product.
I love it.
I always say I'll bleed for it if I'm passionate about it, let's do it. I'm ready to bleed.
Now, what point did, or has this point come? Did you say, okay, well now I'm doing YouTube. I mean, that's what my career is and that's what my career goal is. Or is it, is there still this
sort of side dream or bigger dream beyond you two to be like okay i
do want to parlay this into an acting career you know it's so funny like i um do you have you ever
made like a goal sheet like of goals that you have well like okay well like a spreadsheet okay
okay there we go no but i had too nervous to write them down no but i did i don't find it and feel
guilty no but it's so weird i would I literally found this sheet that I wrote.
And I think I found it, I don't know if it was a couple months ago.
And it was like a reoccurring role on a TV show.
And I'm like, I have that right now.
I'm like, I'm like a national TV commercial.
I'm like, I have that right now.
I'm like, all the things that all these things I've written down, I was like, check.
A manager that believes in me, check.
And it's like, I realized at that moment that I'm like, I'm living my dream.
I get to do what I love.
And I'm like, I don't care if the project is on YouTube
or it's a film or it's a TV show.
I don't care where it's at
because I feel like the lines are crossing.
I was in such a rush and wanted so badly
to break into TV and film
when right now TV and film wants to break into YouTube.
It's so strange.
Everything's going online.
And right now I have no desire to leave.
If anything, I mean, I wrote an eight episode web series.
We had an offer for funding from one company.
It wasn't enough money.
We have another thing, fingers crossed that we'll see if it comes through.
Like for me, if anything, I just want to keep, you know, increasing the quality and things
that I make.
Would that be a new channel?
What's the nature of it?
I don't want to go into too much.
This is a really good, it's like, it'd be almost like a CW kind of show.
So it's like,
it's a,
like 10 minute webisodes.
There's eight of them.
And it's very interactive
and it's very,
it's what my audience would like.
Like,
you know,
it has to do with like romance and love,
but it's like,
it's really funny.
Like the characters are very,
each one's very distinct
and it's very funny.
So you're playing a character.
I play the main,
the main girl,
Samantha.
Samantha.
Yeah.
And just give us a little
bit of what samantha's like what's the hook um i think that the big well the big hook of the series
is the relationship between her and her best friend because they're perfect for each other
he's in love with her she doesn't realize it so it's like that whole thing where you're always
rooting for them to get together and then they finally do and then they don't and then you know
it's just all that but it's like the i don't know this. Again, I don't want to go into it too much.
I'm so paranoid.
I'm afraid.
The first eight episodes are written.
The first season's done.
And I want to get it made and get it out there.
So it's a question of sponsorship with enough money to cover the budget.
I thought about doing Kickstarter.
But I have major issues with being like, hey, give me $10,000 and I'll give you a line in my show.
I don't want my kids' money or my viewers' money.
I would rather get a sponsor behind it.
I feel like that's the route that I want to try.
I mean, who knows?
I might eventually try Kickstarter, but I don't think I want to.
I don't want my viewers' money to do something that I want to do.
I'd rather it be free for them and them just, you know, be entertained and have to deal with maybe a little bit of sponsorship in it.
Now, you've been doing this for quite some time.
Seven years, yeah.
Right.
And, you know, and we have each other, you know.
This is not an easy business to be in because YouTube is constantly changing and you have to constantly kind constantly reinvent yourself and come up with new things and keep people interested in that kind of thing.
You're doing this kind of alone and you're still doing it.
You're going to leave from here and go and edit more videos.
What keeps you motivated?
What keeps you going?
I think that it's just mentality.
I literally have to tell myself that I watch this really good sermon by this pastor, Joel Osteen. He was talking about how like, you have to literally
tell yourself that like, there's nothing that you can't handle, like get up and like, just know that
whatever God gives you, it doesn't matter if you're religious or not, but like, I'm, I'm,
I'm a Jesus freak. So like, um, he just, he talked about how like, you need to get up and say that,
like, you know, that thank you God, that whatever you give me today, I know that I can handle
because you wouldn't have given it to me if I couldn't have handled it. So on the days when I'm really tired,
I'm like, okay, well, this is on my plate. So obviously I can handle it. So I think a lot of
it's just, it's attitude instead of me when I'm home editing, instead of being like, oh,
I'd rather be out. It's like, oh, look at what I'm getting to do. Look at the products. And I mean,
I struggle with the changes to YouTube because if you know, it's like the trend is a lot of like,
you know, put up multiple videos that are lower quality
or like put up like a gaming video
or whatever
and I just know for me
like that's not my style.
Like I love making really cool videos.
I want,
if anything,
when I just put up like a challenge video
with my brother
or a challenge with a friend,
I'm like,
I feel like I'm letting them down
and they love it
but I want over the top.
I want like something different,
you know?
Like so it always bothers me.
I'm like,
I don't'm gonna upload that
video but yeah so i think then it's just it's just fun youtube is one of those places that like
you know it's always gonna keep changing and i mean who knows if it's gonna be youtube it might
be another site in five years i mean but i know i'm always gonna be making my own content like
once you realize the power and freedom of doing stuff yourself you'll never stop it's like being your own boss it's brilliant it's a pretty good deal it's a really good deal
people don't i mean i get a lot of people ask me like how do i get big on youtube and i'm like
they're like it's just hard work like some people hit it on the first one some it's two years some
it's four like look the fine brothers how many years was it for them before they blew up was it
seven or whatever like then then now they're huge. Like you can't,
like you have to put the work in,
you know,
I'm like,
get a camera,
learn to film,
learn to edit.
Like,
you know,
you got to put in the work and then,
you know,
if you want anything,
you just fight for it.
Well,
we appreciate hearing your story of fighting for it and the success you've had.
Thanks for this time that you spent with us.
Grab the Sharpie.
You got to sign the table.
Oh, I do?
Yeah.
Okay, do you describe it like as I'm signing it
or how do we do this?
Because they're listening right now.
Yeah, yeah.
Maybe you should go over that direction.
There's good real estate for you.
Charging new territory over here.
I'm going to put a heart.
Oh, yeah.
And I'm going to put BLT.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
And that was our Ear Biscuit with Brittany Louise Taylor.
Thank you to Brittany for sharing her story.
You know, the thing that struck me was her sheer tenacity in creating her YouTube presence,
how she had something
on the live streaming platform.
And interestingly enough,
she had pre-taped segments.
That was, you know,
it was very YouTube-ish to do that,
to take a live platform,
but to have these edited pieces and so she actually used something that was made for YouTube and
did it somewhere else which was made more for live stream and also going back eight or nine years and
Doing anything that had hundreds of thousands of people that who were interested in it that that is just unheard of I ever
talked to anyone who had that kind
of success that long ago. And then it was shut down and she had to basically start over on the
YouTube platform and she did it in the tenacious way that she did it. First of all, she did it in
character, but then she stayed in character in the comments. Like, I had totally forgotten that she had commented on our channel, man.
I do remember that.
I remember it vividly.
I do remember it.
Like, I mean, I interpreted her character as being a stalker, like someone who's a little too into what we were doing to reply to.
I was a little concerned.
But she was in character.
Yeah.
That was the great thing about it.
And she commented on everybody that commented on her video.
And watching 50,000 videos in her first year on YouTube.
I mean, the thing that is really significant to me
is that you've got people who kind of just stumble into it.
You know, we talked to Glozell,
where she makes the initial video
that is sort of an accidental viral video. And then it's, and then her career becomes about, well, building upon
that moment, you know, and it becomes a successful YouTube career. And then you get somebody like
Brittany who just basically willed it into, into being. And, you know, and I did, I know there's
a lot of people out there. There's a lot of people listening. A lot of people, you know, in that,
now that this is a thing that you can do,
who they want to do it.
And you just see that, well,
it might be a whole lot of work.
You know, it's definitely, that's one of the paths.
Yeah.
I don't know that Brittany would say,
you should reply to every person who comments on your videos.
But hey, you know, that's one way to do do it I don't think she's capable of doing that now with
the the you know the the quantity of comments on her channel I'm sure she doesn't she's not able
to do that now but she still maintains that personal connection that I mean she was able
to tell us about so um again it's great to get the perspective on how she has made it to the place where she is.
And we look forward to, you know, this narrative series that she's talking about.
It seems like we got a little bit of the scoop on that.
So that's good.
That's what an ear biscuit will give you.
The scoop?
It'll give you the scoop.
It'll give you an understanding.
It'll help you understand somebody.
Now when we watch her videos or when you watch her video, you're going to understand more of
the girl from Arizona.
Maybe we should have called this podcast The Scoop.
That's what I'm thinking right now.
It sounds like, it makes me think of cat litter.
You know? How about
ice cream? Or ice cream.
The Scoop. Kitty litter
ice cream. Now that's something
to think about. You never had a cat. Why do you
think about a kitty litter with
scoop? I had a cat
for a little bit, if we really want to go
into this. I had a calico kitten
that I slept on. It got worms.
It slept on my pillow and then it got worms and we got rid of it.
We don't want to talk about that. I didn't kill it. We just
gave it back. Gave it back to its mom?
We'll get into this later, Rhett.
Thank you for listening to this Ear Biscuit.
We do it every week.
We have capacity for you to invite your friends to listen via the SoundCloud or the iTunes.
And please do that.
Keep listening.
Keep inviting.
Use both ears.
And we'll keep broadcasting in mono.
You keep listening in stereo.
We will reply to your comments individually.
Next week, Link's going to be in your left ear and I'm going to be in your right
ear.
Well, we'll talk about that. Maybe not.
Well, it's possible. I mean, technically, we could
do that. I'm going to try to make it happen.
See you next week. Or
you hear us next week. Something like that.
Man, you're falling apart. Bye.