SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Do you know where you were on January 4, 2007? I definitely don't. But Trisha Paytas does. That is the day she uploaded her very first video to a new platform called YouTube.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRISHA PAYTAS: Hey, what's up? This is Trisha. I'm super fun, super friendly, have many talents, but one hidden talent. I'm a rapper. (Rapping) All right, stop, collaborate and listen. Ice is back...
DETROW: Since then, Paytas has amassed millions of followers who tune into her constantly updated stream of content. She sings, she dances, she films shopping hauls and morning routine videos.
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PAYTAS: And I kind of just wake up when the light wakes me up, I'm fortunate. I work for myself. I work from home, so I can kind of just lay.
DETROW: She captures hard moments, too.
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PAYTAS: Where I just feel so heartbroken because I need to do a men - man detox for...
DETROW: And often gets in hot water. She has had many controversial moments over the past two decades. And now she is telling the stories behind a bunch of it in her memoir, "Crying On The Kitchen Floor." Paytas shares she always had wanted to be famous from a very early age. So when she joined my co-host Juana Summers to talk about it, Juana had this simple question. Why?
PAYTAS: Just the attention. I just - I wanted attention so bad as a kid. You know, my parents just worked a lot, and so I just was like, how do I get attention? And reality shows started around high school for me - like, "The Girls Next Door," Anna Nicole, "The Osbournes." And then I was like, oh, maybe that's the route, but I didn't have any connections on how to get on TV. So I really lucked into it because literally YouTube started when I was 18, and I started when I was 18, so we kind of started at the same time, and I just got really lucky.
JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Trisha, you've acknowledged saying harmful things as well as lying for attention and money. What responsibility do you feel towards the people who are maybe the targets of some of those comments or performances, even if they never become your fans?
PAYTAS: I have come to terms with that. I mean, I think that's my warning to so many people and maybe, like, why I share my story - is the internet's forever.
SUMMERS: Yeah.
PAYTAS: What you say will not be erased. It can't be erased, no matter whether you believe it or you're trolling or whatever. It's out there forever. So my digital footprint has been horrible for quite some time. It was horrible. And just the past six years, I mean, I was very mentally unwell. I was abusing drugs, all this stuff like that. And so it was - not an excuse, but it's, like, a reason that I was acting that way. And so it's just a cautionary tale to be careful 'cause I really don't think - if this social media wasn't my job, it would be hard for me to get employment.
It's embarrassing. I mean, my past behavior is embarrassing, and I totally understand. I mean, I'll spend my whole life apologizing for past mistakes. And the people who can, like, look past it, I appreciate. And the people who don't, I completely understand as well. And I'm never here to be like, forgive me, uncancel me. But I really am trying to show, like, a little bit of growth in that you're not stuck in one space forever.
SUMMERS: With the understanding that you admit that you've lied about all kinds of things for views and clicks, why should we take your word now? Given that you've written this memoir and you say it's transparent and honest and real, why should people believe you?
PAYTAS: Well, for one, you have to go through a lot of legal teams when you write a book, so...
SUMMERS: Sure.
PAYTAS: ...Everything had to be a hundred percent factual. I know. That's the great question. I really - there was multiple titles for this book, and one is like the boy who cried wolf. It's like the girl who cried on the kitchen floor. It's like, we've seen this, like, story so many times. And yeah, I mean, I definitely was a pathological liar for a lot of my life, and I understand people not believing me. But this is the one first time where I feel like I can recollect my entire career and my life in full honesty. And if I couldn't recollect something where I could prove it, we didn't put it in the book.
And again, for, like, legal reasons, I start the book off saying, like, lies ahead because I thought, well, what if I don't remember correctly? But turns out I remember a lot of things very correctly, and I was able to unlock a lot of stuff that I hadn't before. And I was able to really go back and - through videos, through emails, through all the stuff like that and really see for myself, too, the truth of my life and putting the pieces together as they actually happened.
SUMMERS: I do want to talk about the book title, "Crying On The Kitchen Floor." It comes from this painful memory that you revisit in the book, where you outed a man that you were dating without his consent in a tearful video. And you wrote that this is the biggest regret of your career. What was it like revisiting that part of your life?
PAYTAS: I think that's the part that was hard for me to grasp and, like, really come to terms with because in general I would consider my trolling an act of desperation for money, or I felt like I wasn't really intentionally harming people and making myself look dumb. I was always trying to dumb myself down for the joke. And with this one, it really hurt. I mean, this one was a real person. I feel like, obviously, this guy that I dated, I - you know, people just called him out, I guess, as being gay, and then I made a video right away and just said he's gay.
And I think it really did a lot of harm and damage to this person. And I've been able to apologize to him time and time again. Years later, we reconciled on my podcast and stuff. But, you know, I think it's one of the hardest things for me that I did that. I don't think I should have gone to the internet. Even though I was, like, really hurt, I shouldn't have gone to the internet. I shouldn't have titled it that. It wasn't my intention to harm, and...
SUMMERS: Sure.
PAYTAS: ...It did. And it was - I mean, it is. It's my biggest regret. I, like, wish I could have never done that. He was someone I really loved. And yeah, I have a lot of regret over that.
SUMMERS: And that's not the only difficult chapter of your life that you revisit. You talk about past emotional trauma. You've talked about healing and mental health. What kind of work did you have to do on yourself to be able to go back and revisit those episodes, to tell people about them so publicly? Some of these things, you haven't talked about before.
PAYTAS: I wanted to just be as real and authentic as possible because all those meltdowns, all that trolling doesn't have to be in vain. And so if I can just be really honest about how I got up off the kitchen floor, where it's like, damn, we've seen Trisha be - I mean, I was the lowest of the - I mean, as far as society is full of social media, I mean, nobody wanted to be associated with me. I don't think you could have gotten lower than Trisha Paytas in 2019. So I really wanted to show the steps that it did take for me to get there, and there was a lot of rock bottom.
And the main thing was I wasn't asking for help. I didn't know there was even something, quote-unquote, "wrong" with me. I wasn't diagnosed with any mental illness until I was 31, and that was after going to a mental hospital involuntarily. So it was - you know, there was a lot that I had to do. And then I realized getting help was the first step, and that's what started changing. And then every time I hit a rock bottom since, I just kept asking for help.
And, I mean, it's really changed. I work every day. I mean, I have borderline, so it's like emotional triggers and spiraling and splitting. I work every day to, like, not have that happen, especially now being a mom, but also just for the internet's sake. And I really hold myself accountable to not have public meltdowns or exposing people, and it's worked for the past five, six years. You know, I feel like I've shown people that I can have control of my own emotions and my own stability.
SUMMERS: These days, when you're online, consuming content and you see somebody who has a very public crashout, what goes through your mind?
PAYTAS: I have a lot of sympathy. I have a lot of empathy. I mean, it's a cry for help, you know? It really is. And I'm thankful people called, you know, in on me, like, wellness checks 'cause I needed them.
SUMMERS: Yeah.
PAYTAS: Sometimes I think, like, certain platforms need to take a little bit more of a stance and, like, step in a little bit more when there is a public cry for help like that because they really do reward crashouts. I was...
SUMMERS: Yeah.
PAYTAS: ...One of those people. So I - you know, there's a lot of emotions when I see that.
SUMMERS: Yeah. Well, what would Trisha today say to that crashout Trish, that woman who was crying on the kitchen floor? What would you tell her?
PAYTAS: Oh, God. I would just tell her how great life is. That girl on the kitchen floor did not want to continue living. I was just ready at any moment. I'm like, let me be a tragic Hollywood story. Let me go down in infamy at a - you know, die at a young age. Like, that's really what she, like, wanted and thought was in the cards for her. And, oh, my God, life is, like, so good. I tell people, like, you got to hang in there because it gets really good. Like, what is the purpose of life? Why are we here? We don't know, but it's a short time.
And what I will say is when you have a great experience, when you start really living your life as your true authentic self, it's so beautiful. I never want it to end. I pray for another, like, 50 years here on Earth with my kids. It's a beautiful experience. And she wanted to be married and successful, but she would never imagine the kind of husband we have, the kids we have, the life we have and getting to do - like, I've never gotten to do mainstream press like this. Like, I've done it for 20 - it's very cool. All the dreams came true times a hundred.
SUMMERS: We've been speaking with Trisha Paytas. Her new memoir is "Crying On The Kitchen Floor." Trisha, thank you.
PAYTAS: Thank you so much.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "CRYING ON THE KITCHEN FLOOR")
PAYTAS: (Singing) That girl's still crying on my kitchen floor. But that's not who I am anymore. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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