Trisha Paytas

Trisha Paytas is an American media personality, actress, singer, and YouTuber born on May 8, 1988, in Riverside, California. After her parents divorced, she relocated with her family to Freeport, Illinois, at age three. She has an older brother and a younger maternal half-sister. At fifteen, Paytas moved back to California to live with her father and enrolled in a Catholic online school program before returning to Illinois the following year to live with her mother and attend high school in Pecatonica.

After moving to Los Angeles to pursue acting, Paytas supported herself through professional lingerie modeling, stripping, and escort work. During this period she made television appearances on The Greg Behrendt Show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and Who Wants to Be a Superhero?, and attempted to break the fastest-talker record on Guinness World Records Unleashed, delivering 710 words in 54 seconds without success. She also appeared in music videos for artists including Eminem, Amy Winehouse, and The All-American Rejects. In 2010, she was featured on an episode of My Strange Addiction as a self-admitted tanning addict.

Paytas registered her YouTube channel in 2007, originally dedicating it to film director Quentin Tarantino before shifting her focus to fashion, beauty, and relationship content. Between 2013 and 2017, she produced a series of trolling videos, which she described to Business Insider as a deliberate strategy to attract views. Beginning in 2014, she began posting mukbang and eating-challenge videos that drew wide audiences. That same year she competed on the television game show Celebrity Name Game alongside her mother. Her 2015 song "Fat Chicks" received coverage from outlets including Cosmopolitan, The Huffington Post, and Business Insider, and in 2016 her EP Daddy Issues debuted at number 25 on the Billboard Top Heatseekers albums chart. In 2017, Paytas became a housemate on Celebrity Big Brother 20, departing after eleven days and subsequently making public comments about fellow participants that included accusations of drug use.

In 2019, Paytas headlined The Heartbreak Tour to support her music. The following year she co-founded the emo pop and pop-punk band Sadboy2005 with Social Repose, releasing a self-titled debut EP in 2020 and a follow-up EP titled Trigger Warning in 2021, along with five music videos. Also in September 2020, Paytas began co-hosting the podcast Frenemies alongside h3h3Productions creator Ethan Klein. The show ran for 41 episodes before Paytas announced her departure on June 8, 2021, following an on-air dispute with Klein over production and creative ownership. Her exit ended the podcast and initiated a prolonged public feud between the two, during which a private text exchange was posted on social media and led to accusations of antisemitism against Paytas, for which she later apologized. In 2021, Paytas also expanded her presence to the subscription platform OnlyFans.

In May 2023, Paytas began co-hosting a podcast called Oversharing with YouTuber Colleen Ballinger, but the show ended after three episodes following accusations against Ballinger of grooming fans. In July 2023, Paytas launched her own YouTube podcast, Just Trish, co-hosted by Oscar Gracey, covering current pop culture topics. Originally conceived as a weekly series, the show expanded to two episodes per week and began featuring guest appearances. An August 2023 episode with Tana Mongeau became the first episode to surpass one million YouTube views. As of August 2025, Just Trish had accumulated approximately 145 million YouTube views across more than 200 episodes. In 2024, Paytas signed with the Creative Artists Agency as her talent representative.

On December 7, 2024, Paytas made a guest appearance on Saturday Night Live during the episode hosted by Paul Mescal, appearing as herself in a sketch parodying Spotify Wrapped. Three days later, on December 10, she starred in a live holiday show at the Beacon Theater titled Trisha Paytas: Trishmas Live. In February 2025, she starred in Trisha Paytas' Big Broadway Dream, a one-night benefit performance at the St. James Theater that featured Sutton Foster, Ben Platt, Joy Woods, and Rachel Zegler. That same year, Paytas embarked on The Eras of Trish Tour, her first North American headlining tour, which ran from February through June across more than 30 cities in the United States and Canada. The show incorporated live singing, costume changes, and video montages drawn from her internet career.

In October 2025, it was announced that Paytas would make her Broadway debut in the second revival of Beetlejuice, playing the role of Maxine Dean in a limited engagement running from November 4 through November 23. Also announced that month was her upcoming appearance in season three of the HBO series Euphoria. In January 2026, Paytas announced her intention to seek election to the United States House of Representatives in California's 26th congressional district, with her party affiliation undisclosed at the time of the announcement.