A scrawny white dude in a Green Bay Packers hoodie purses his lips on my TikTok For You Page, with the text “Why are ya’ll tryna normalize girls with body hair. Sorry but no,” floating on the screen like incel alphabet soup. For a moment, I wonder if I’ve accidentally infiltrated the manosphere side of TikTok — but before I can click into the comments, the feed cuts to a woman who breaks out into a serotonin-inducing cackle that makes me instantly wish we were friends. Long, bedazzled nails that must have taken hours to perfect cover her mouth as she tries to stifle her laughter. She smirks knowingly — like a boxer whose woefully overconfident opponent just botched their first blow — before she goes in for the kill. I, like her millions of viewers, have a ringside seat to a primetime Drew Afualo roast.
“Everybody has the capacity to be really mean,” 29-year-old Afualo tells me while getting glam for Betches’ inaugural Women Aren’t Funny cover shoot on a rainy morning in Manhattan’s Flatiron District. “It's how you use it that makes the difference between a good person and a bad person.” Depending on who you are, you might not agree that her comedy is “mean” — for example, any woman growing up in the era of internet misogyny (so… all of us) may find the words “cathartic,” “relatable,” and, of course, “fucking hilarious” more apt. After all, it’s through these sharp take-downs that Afualo has transformed from TikToker to one of comedy's most-followed and funniest advocates for women.
Drew Afualo Can Handle The Heat
It’s a superpower she never expected — becoming a Gen Z comedy icon was never part of the plan. While Afualo was always outspoken, virality came as a surprise when she decided to start recording her rants about dating and misogyny on TikTok four years ago. Her first video to burst through the 2021 algorithm, then dominated by Doja Cat dances and baked feta pasta tutorials, was a hilarious list of red flags in men, which she casually posted on a whim. The red flags included a pu pu platter of toxic traits, like if he mentions Joe Rogan, says he loves The Wolf of Wall Street, or calls women “females.” As it racked up views and skull emojis from women, the video also garnered a lot of hate. But Afualo was undeterred by the naysayers: “I'm not ashamed of what I'm doing,” she says. “At least I'm fucking honest.”
The industry has been quick to take note of her rising stardom: she snagged a Forbes 30 Under 30 seat in the increasingly competitive social media category, joined the likes of Charli D’Amelio and Alix Earle in The Hollywood Reporter’s “Most Influential Influencers” list, and, just this spring, she signed with the top talent agency CAA. And now, with more than 8 million followers on TikTok, Afualo has become a daily must-watch for not only you and I, but for celebrities both niche and mainstream. She’s friends with them now too. A-listers like Chappell Roan appear on her hit podcast The Comment Section, and she jokes and hobnobs with superstars during red carpet hosting gigs with ease. (Billie Eilish recognized her at the Grammys.) But what’s surprised her more than anything is the rampant insecurity of women worldwide, no matter their status. Even the most hyper-successful women who are considered among the most beautiful people on Earth feel it. “It was really shocking to me to see how many women in the industry needed to hear what I’m saying,” she says. “I truly think women are so superior in so many ways. It feels obvious to me, but it's not obvious to them. You would think famous women are the most confident women in the world.” She shakes her head, “Nope.”
As Afaulo has learned through her work, no one is immune to the enduring tentacles of misogyny, which is what makes her scathing comedy so satisfying. She dishes out the types of burns regular people might finally think of in the shower, days after they wish they could have clapped back at that annoying coworker or date. Remember Green Bay boy? Afualo could have taken him out with one hand tied behind her back: “Most embarrassing part about this video to me? You were sucking your lips in the whole time. When you push ‘em out, they look the fucking same. No lips? No opinion. Arthur Christmas headass.” (Arthur Christmas, the 2011 animated feature about Santa Claus’ youngest and clumsiest son? No one else could think of it, but nothing else could describe it.)
Roasting and comedy are in Afualo’s blood, figuratively, of course. The Afualo family “loves to tease each other,” she says. Being the middle child (Afualo has two siblings) also helped her gain a lifetime of sparring experience. As a middle child myself, I point out that insulting your siblings is the only way to get attention, which invites a soft, high-pitched cackle (more on that shortly). “You grow up having an instinct for it,” she agrees. Afualo adds that the roasting in her family is always “gentle,” though her definition of gentle is unclear. And as for the origin story of the singular cackle that has transformed into the internet Bat Signal of chauvinistic castration? “Genetics,” she says. “My whole family laughs like that. Everybody does.”
Growing up as a “big girl,” Afualo had to form a resistance to bigotry early on, building mental armor to protect her from the Lord Of The Flies cruelty that adolescence often brings out. Challenges continued at The University of Hawaii, where she studied sports broadcasting. Because of her gender-neutral name and the assumption that women couldn’t possibly pursue a career in sports, there was an expectation when she showed up to things that she’d be male. This helped her, in her pre-fame life, handily surpass her Gladwellian 10,000 hours of psychological endurance, contributing to the thick skin and an immutable sense of self that now enables her to thrive in a sometimes brutal business.
As evidenced by her comment section, not everyone takes kindly to Afualo’s material. The nature of her content triggers non-stop vitriol from some of the internet’s most cursed corners — Afulao’s detractors cast her as a villain while spewing actual hate themselves. That is, if they don’t retreat. If you click on the username of a commenter Afualo has successfully eviscerated, it’s not uncommon to be met with a “this user could not be found” message, signaling defeat. “I love being a bitch,” Afualo admits.
Funny. Fearless. Fired Up. TikTok’s Best Roast Master Is Coming In Hot.
“Everybody has the capacity to be really mean. It's how you use it that makes the difference between a good person and a bad person.”
“It was really shocking to me to see how many women in the industry needed to hear what I’m saying. I truly think women are so superior in so many ways.”
Those who don’t back down make fun of Afualo’s weight, her ethnicity, and, more recently, they’ve started to insult her engagement. Hair up in a light grey sweatsuit, Afualo tells me about her glittering square diamond engagement ring, which her boyfriend of seven years picked out himself before proposing in September. Yet even this exciting moment of celebration was nearly compromised by Afualo’s haters: “A bunch of them are saying, ‘Oh, it’s a shut up ring.’” It’s ironic, given that before her engagement, men consistently mocked her for how long she had gone unmarried. “I used to get, ‘Oh, seven years, no ring,’ to which I'm like, ‘You haven't even seen boobs in real life,’” she says.
Afualo won’t allow the daily avalanche of insults to dull her flame. “I think that ‘fat’ is meant to hurt me, but fat is nothing more than a descriptor,” she says. “It's an adjective. That's just a blatant lie. So that's pretty dumb to me.” This simple refusal to derive meaning or legitimacy from the words of scrubs and trolls is the true crux of Afualo’s mission. Though her content is often interpreted as an attempt to change or educate misogynists, she recognizes that these men are beyond saving. “I want people to see me get the hate and see how I don't internalize it and don't carry it,” she says. “That's my goal. These men are nothing more than pawns in my very large game, which is to liberate everybody else.”
While Afualo commands impressive poise and self-possession, she’s still human, experiencing anxiety as a result of her public-facing career. The more we discuss the consequences of her fame, the lower her voice gets. “Going to the movies, walking around outside, walking around my neighborhood,” she says, “Getting to do things like that and not worry about being looked at, recorded, filmed, asked for pictures… It’s just a very anxious experience now.”
Afualo’s self-appointed social media breaks, which include a complete blackout of all social media, keep her grounded in reality. “It helps to recalibrate me because this job is so all-consuming in so many ways… physically, mentally, emotionally,” she says. “My therapist and I talk about it a lot. She described [being famous] once as being ‘animals in a zoo.’ Some animals thrive in captivity, but that doesn't make it natural. Just because they've learned to survive doesn't mean that they were ever meant to be perceived. Taking the break helps me leave the zoo.”
After successfully dominating the world’s most addictive app, what will Afualo choose to conquer next? Unsurprisingly, her intellect, savvy, and ambition already have her working on “2 billion things at once” — including a steamy fantasy romance novel. In a few weeks, she’ll headline two Betches comedy showcases: one in New York on June 24 alongside viral sensations Cat Cohen and Grace O’Malley, and one in her home base of Los Angeles on July 23 with industry veteran Whitney Cummings and breakout star Robby Hoffman.
Afualo is far from a one-trick pony, and it’s abundantly clear that the young multi-hyphenate is still only in her first act. For right now, however, her beloved TikTok roasts aren’t going anywhere, meaning detractors should keep sleeping with one eye open. More than anyone, Afualo sees haters for who they really are. Or as she puts it, “I haven’t been wrong once.”
Credits
Interview: Carrie Wittmer
Photographer: Mary Ellen Matthews
Stylist: Tabitha Sanchez
Set Design: Dan “Looms” Warden
Hair & Makeup: Adam Simmons
Manicure: Mai Michelle Tran
Chief Content Officer: Kate Ward
VP of Editorial: Katie Corvino
Creative Director: Brittany Levine
Editorial Projects: Emma Sharpe
Talent Director: Shanice Kellman
Motion Graphics: Laura Valencia
Brand Graphics: Nicole Maggio
Video Director: Bryan Russell Smith
Video Editor: McKay Hartwell
Director of Photography: Riede Dervay
Food Stylist: Marilinda Hodgdon
Location: Daylight Studio
Special Thanks: Dylan Hafer, Maddie Mahoney, Jack Maloney, Eleni Sabracos, Tess Tregellas
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