How do you go about turning a successful pull of the internet slot machine into an actual celebrity engine? The latest sensation to try it out is Hailey Welch, a.k.a. Hawk Tuah girl, whose enthusiastic delivery of fairly commonplace blowjob advice — you know, spit on the thing, etc. — on TikTok over the summer earned her a level of viral fame that was unsurpassed until … Pommel Horse guy? After rapidly capitalizing on the initial wave of attention with kitschy merchandise and paid spot appearances, Welch and her reps have now entered phase three: a podcast, natch.
Understandably titled Talk Tuah, the pod debuted earlier this week with comedian Whitney Cummings as its maiden guest. (Side note: Cummings seems to be carving out a curious micro-niche helping new viral figures turned podcasters christen their shows; she also appeared as Anna Delvey’s first foil when the fake heiress launched her own eponymous podcast last summer.)
In its debut episode, the 22-year-old Tennessee native spends some time talking about her fame (“it’s crazy how I said two words and now I’m here, isn’t it?â€), which can only go so far, and doling out relationship advice, which is already a well-worn segment premise among the chat-podcast set. Welch still comes across as a blank slate, someone so early in the celebrity life cycle that her persona requires further definition. For her part, Cummings tries to do some of this work by contrasting Welch’s “ghetto Dolly Parton†(her words) aesthetic with what the comedian perceives as a tendency among privileged white women to fixate on genteel sensitivities. Instead, Welch displays a “one of the boys†penchant for gross-out uninhibitedness, which Cummings appreciates and does seem to be a viable avenue to build a persona around. To this assessment, Welch nods appreciatively.
Chatcasts, and durable internet fame more generally, need a lot of things to be viable, but among them are a hook, consistency, and a constituency. That last factor is perhaps the most important, and you don’t have to squint to already see the lane for Welch. One of her first post-viral appearances was on a Barstool Sports show. Talk Tuah came out of a partnership with Betr, the sports-betting company founded by Jake Paul, the noxious YouTuber turned boxer. In the Hollywood Reporter story touting her signing with a talent firm and an entertainment lawyer for representation, the latter’s statement brought up how she was “known to her friends as the female Theo Vonn.†If this post-viral fame gambit works out, it’s very possible America might well have found its red-state Call Her Daddy.
This is the thing, isn’t it? Can Welch and her team take the one-dimensionality of her fame and build out a larger celebrity infrastructure around her? Maybe this is just election-season fumes speaking, but the conceptual precedent to Welch that immediately comes to mind is Ken Bone, who went viral for looking sorta-kinda interesting while asking a question during a 2016 presidential debate. He, too, sold merch to capitalize on his fame and ended up being invited to appear on talk and interview shows, including, cursedly, Real Time With Bill Maher. Though the difference there is that it was never entirely clear if the guy actually wanted to parlay his moment in the spotlight into a more sustained media presence. In any case, he was milkshake-ducked before we could know for sure. Still, Bone shares the same kind of virality with Welch and thus illustrates the same underlying challenge: Unless you can find more to work with, you hit the limits of the shtick really quickly.
There used to be a strategic logic around why you’d launch a pod to further facilitate one’s celebrity. Back when podcasting wasn’t co-opted by YouTube, the idea was that owning your own successful podcast insulates you from being completely beholden to the caprice of social-media algorithms. As any veteran influencer will tell you, sustaining long term in these spaces is a rough business. Burnout and the threat of precarity are major issues, and there’s been a long line of YouTube personalities who’ve left the game as a result.
But those are problems that will only arise after you’ve become an actual concern, and it remains to be seen whether Welch will become one. The internet is littered with failed attempts at post-viral fame. Anna Delvey’s own podcast, for instance, was short-lived, with the scam artist calling it quits after just nine episodes. She’s now scheduled to appear as a contestant on Dancing With the Stars. That’s the other thing about the modern shape of fame. Talk Tuah may go nowhere, but there are never-ending slot machines for her to pull: Instagram, TikTok (again), Dancing With the Stars, Survivor. At least now she’s got Jake Paul money.