Who is Addison Rae? Highest Paid TikTok Star

If it looks like Rae is throwing everything on the wall to see what sticks, it’s because, well, she is. Growing up, she adored stars like Jennifer Lopez and Beyoncé. She took classes in modeling, acting, and dance, idolizing a teacher from her dance studio who moved across the country to pursue a professional career. So when TikTok started opening doors for Addison Rae, she took every opportunity.

“One great thing I’ve learned through experience is that saying not is much more powerful than saying yes,” says Addison Rae. “It’s been a struggle for me, because I’m a great girl who says ‘yes.’ Looking ahead, I want to learn to prioritize things. Obviously I love to sing, I love to dance, but there is a time for everyone in their respective place. Right now, I want to focus on acting. ”

Addison Rae has propped her metallic blue boots on a bench in Los Feliz from Go Get Em Tiger, where no tattooed hipster seems to recognize her. She lives in a high-rise near the Century City Mall, but asked to meet here, where her security guard dropped her off in his Tesla. She has been working with the burly man for about seven months and is still not entirely comfortable with him taking care of her.

“Sometimes I think, ‘Can you go?’” She laughs. “It was definitely a safety issue. There are times when I dismiss the fact that there are evil people in the world. I would say that I am quite naive and also very attractive. I will talk to absolutely anyone who talks to me, which can be worrying in some situations, because you never know. ”

It is this element of her personality that Addison Rae surmises attracted her fanbase on TikTok, where she is generally seen lip-syncing to popular songs while doing basic dance moves. She is a good dancer, but certainly not so skilled that her routines are the appeal.

“I am a very positive person. Some say too positive. Most say it is too positive, ”she says. “I feel like that’s what attracted people, seeing how happy he was all the time. I think people love to see people have fun, be passionate, inspired and excited about what they do, and that’s what I’ve always reflected. ”

How optimistic is Addison Rae?

In late 2019, when his TikTok follower count was around 300,000, she received a message from someone on FamousBirthdays.com, listing the celebrities’ ages and dates of birth. A representative told Addison Rae that her site was interested in interviewing her and asked if she could come to Los Angeles in just a few days to sit down for a video chat.

Even though she was still a student at LSU and had no idea who was behind FamousBirthdays.com, she agreed and immediately booked a weekend trip to the West Coast. It was the first time she had returned since he was 16 years old, and the visit only reaffirmed his desire to leave Louisiana. After doing the online interview in a random building in Santa Monica, he spent the rest of his time meeting with other influencers that he had texted.

A couple of months later, one of Rae’s online friends became her roommate when she moved to Los Angeles. But she felt unleashed without her family and begged her parents to go to California.

“I was like, ‘I really need to live with you, but I know this is very difficult,’” she recalls. “My dad was the only one who worked, and he worked for a towing company, so it wasn’t like she was making incredible amounts of money to quit his job and move here. But they put a lot of faith in me. I was like, ‘I promise you guys, I’m going to get the money back. I’m going to be able to go out here. ”

So in early 2020, Addison Rae’s parents and her two younger siblings moved to Tarzana. She lived with his family and filled his days with as many industry meetings as she could. At first, it didn’t go well. Although executives were impressed with his following, most objected to his lack of experience. She was encouraged to submit self-recorded auditions and continue his relationships with his brand partners to demonstrate his work ethic.

But one producer, Jennifer Gibgot, was so enchanted by Addison Rae’s personality that she decided to take a chance. The two had arranged for a general meeting to discuss the possibility of a dance movie because Gibgot was the producer behind the “Step Up” franchise.

“I’ve had very good luck in my career identifying young talents,” says Gibgot, noting his pick of Channing Tatum on “Step Up,” Zac Efron on “Hairspray” and Liam Hemsworth on “The Last Song.” “I’ve done it so many times that when you know it, you know it. Of course, there are haters on Twitter who say “Why hire a TikTok star when so many people are acting and trying?” And I feel sorry for those people, really. But you can’t make a quality star. ”

To sell it to studio directors, Gibgot oversaw Addison Rae’s audition process, filming the actor’s introduction tape at his home with agents watching. The producer then prepared a package for Bill Block, CEO of Miramax, the company in charge of the remake of “He’s All That,” highlighting Rae’s social media stats.

“To her credit, she said, ‘I see what you see, and she clearly has a following,'” says Gibgot. “And then we did the press release, and all the media picked it up. He realized, ‘OK, he definitely has a following.’

Still, she understood the risk she was taking in giving a rookie a lead role, even if the role wasn’t too far from Addison Rae’s own reality. In “She’s All That,” she plays a high school social media influencer who is broadcasting live to her fans when she discovers her boyfriend is cheating on her. The mortifying video goes viral, and in an attempt to restore her popularity, she sets out to prove that she can make any guy as sexy as her ex. That’s when she befriends a young outcast ( Tanner Buchanan , “Cobra Kai’s” ), persuading him to cut his hair long and spend less time in his darkroom developing photographs.

To get the best performance out of Addison Rae, Gibgot decided to go with a director who has a history with young performers: Mark Waters, who “landed the performance of Lindsay Lohan on ‘Freaky Friday’ and gave Rachel McAdams her first big role. on ‘Mean Girls’ “.

After she was offered the concert, Waters downloaded TikTok and started watching Addison Rae’s videos. She thought she had charisma but wanted to meet her in person. Over lunch, she was impressed: “We can make this work,” the director remembers thinking. “Let’s roll up our sleeves and train her. It will be years of Meisner training in eight weeks. ”

To her credit, Waters says, Addison Rae was willing to get the job done, immerse herself in classes with acting coach Nancy Banks, and learn to be vulnerable on camera.

“When we started filming, I thought, ‘I need you to go further. I need you to go deeper. I want you to go too far to be able to tell you to stand down, ‘”Waters says. “By the time we got to the last couple of weeks of filming, I didn’t even have to push her any further. … She’s good at the movie. Obviously Netflix bought it in the bedroom. I have no idea what the metrics will be, but it doesn’t really matter, because we wouldn’t have made a big sale if it hadn’t worked. ”

Addison Rae’s favorite moment during filming came when she had to perform her longest monologue, a scene that takes place on stage in front of an auditorium full of classmates at the prom. She had no trouble memorizing lines, which came naturally after spending his childhood memorizing Bible verses in religious school. But she was nervous about getting to a truly emotional place.

“And there was a girl in the audience who was an extra who was crying after I did the first take,” she says, smiling to herself. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I just did that.’ That wasn’t even a scripted part, and the cameras weren’t even focused on her. That was the moment when I really started to understand it, that I could touch people emotionally through what I was saying and feel like it was coming from me. ”

Still, Addison Rae doesn’t expect the public to respond kindly to her.

“People have a lot to say about ‘Did you work for it, do you deserve it, do you even like to act?’” She says. “That was the hardest part to understand, because I love acting and have done it all my life, but people don’t know. In a way, I’m trying to prove myself. Like, ‘Hey, I love this; This is one of my passions. ‘ And that is very difficult “.

Rachael Leigh Cook, who starred in the original movie “She’s All That” alongside Freddie Prinze Jr., says she identifies with where Addison Rae is. The now 41-year-old actress met Addison Rae while playing her mother in “He’s All That,” a small role that is not a continuation of her original character, social outcast-turned-prom queen Laney Boggs.

“I think this is the smartest possible first step for her,” says Cook. What are the critics going to say? What is amazing as an influencer? You can’t teach people to look nice, and she has that energy. I am very much related to her, even though she got off to a good start due to the incredible heights of fame she has been experiencing. But you cannot change the fact that as of Friday his identity does change. She is a movie star. And everyone hears the starting gun go off ”.

Whatever the reaction, Rae is no stranger to criticism. At a UFC fight in July, cameras caught her tapping former President Trump’s shoulder and introducing herself to him. Many of her fans were upset, assuming this meant she was a Trump supporter. When asked about the episode at first, Addison Rae objects, “I don’t feel comfortable talking about it,” she says, shifting in her seat. She goes on to explain that she feels there is no point in trying to convince fans of his beliefs when “there is nothing I can do to change that opinion.”

But after a few moments, he decides to clarify his position. “I mean, I don’t support Trump,” she says. “And if someone does, that is their opinion and I respect everyone’s opinion, of each one of them. But sometimes it’s very rare that you meet a former president, and I think most people could agree with me on that. It is very rare. And I consider myself a friendly person, so introducing myself does not mean that I am behind everything that a person respectively approves ”.

He’s also been shifting his focus on how she posts on TikTok. In March, he performed eight dances that originated from the platform of “The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon” without giving credit to the creators of the movements. She says she was glad the creators were asked to appear later on Fallon’s show, saying that “we’re still figuring out how to handle things like that that we haven’t handled before” because TikTok is still a relatively new app.

“If it’s an extra effort or a few more minutes to find someone who did the dance, you should do it. It doesn’t take much longer, ”she says. “It’s an app and we’re all on it all day anyway, so why can’t you just look up a name? You know what I mean?”

She says she doesn’t feel as much pressure to constantly post to TikTok, especially now that she’s busier with her acting duties. And her mentors, like Kardashian, have encouraged her to protect her privacy, sharing less about her personal life on the app as she branches out.

“A year ago, I was literally in my room doing absolutely nothing, so I could do a thousand TikToks and have all the time in the world for it,” says Addison Rae. “Now is the time to go a step further, to go the extra mile to make sure people can see my passion for acting in the future. I really hope that people give [the movie] a chance, give me a chance to show myself as an actress and not go into it with a negative mindset. ”

Easterling is originally from Lafayette, Louisiana and has two younger brothers, Enzo and Lucas. Her parents, Monty Lopez and Sheri Easterling, have joined the social network craze and each has their own account. After the influencer’s success, the family decided to move to Los Angeles, California and lived for a time at Hype House.

Addison Rae and her family

Hype House is a mansion located in Beverly Hills where more than twenty tiktokers coexist, creating content for the platform.