If you’ve spent any time on the internet within the last five years, Liza Koshy has likely popped up in at least one of your feeds. With almost 45 million followers across her own platforms, the YouTube personality is officially prolific on the web. Between online content creation and acting gigs, it’s safe to say this rising (super)star is killing the game. Curious about Koshy’s buzz? Check out the following interesting facts about her life.
She’s dating fellow YouTube star David Dobrik
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You can learn a lot about a person by following their social media, and that’s doubly true when you’re dealing with social media stars like Koshy. The 21-year-old routinely references and re-tweets fellow YouTube personality David Dobrik, whom — according to a post on Dobrik’s Instagram feed — Koshy has been dating since 2015. “This is a picture of me and my favorite birthday present that I’ve ever been lucky enough to receive for the past two years,” Dobrik captioned a super-cute picture of the pair. “Thank you Liza for putting together an amazing weekend. I love u cutie.” Aw!
She jumped out of a plane
If you spend any amount of time watching Koshy’s videos on YouTube or following along on social media, it becomes readily apparent that she’ll pretty much try anything once. And it seems as though her adventurous spirit includes jumping out of perfectly good airplanes. In a video shared to her YouTube page, Koshy explained, “My biggest fear was flying on a plane… thank God I got to jump out of it.” She and Dobrik, who were vacationing in Hawaii at the time, headed to Skydive Hawaii to get harnessed up and spread their proverbial wings. Koshy later tweeted photos of the epic occasion, joking, “When you try to channel Beyoncé at 15,000 feet but end up looking like a sassy raisin.”
She interviewed President Obama
While Koshy tends to keep things light and fun on her YouTube channel, she does occasionally use it to raise awareness for more serious issues, like struggling with anxiety, facing internet bullying and, in a very special interview, encouraging young people to be more politically active.
To that end, Koshy sat down with none other than former president Barack Obama for a five-minute interview. “Well, because, you know, young people are gonna be the people who make the biggest impact in this country, and this is the way to reach them. And you’re doing a great job talking to them about some of the things you guys care about,” Obama said to Koshy during the sit-down.
She’s Carson 2.0 on the ‘TRL’ reboot
In addition to her quote-unquote day job as a YouTube star, Koshy enjoys an on-air co-hosting gig for MTV’s reboot of Total Request Live. That’s right — she’s a millennial version of Carson Daly!
According to Broadway World, Koshy signed a production and executive producer deal with MTV to create original content for the network. As part of the deal, the social media superstar was also tapped for co-hosting duties on the TRL revival alongside D.C. Young Fly, Tamara Dhia, Matt Rife, Amy Pham, Erik Zachary, Lawrence Jackson, Grayson and Ethan Dolan, Gigi Gorgeous, Eva Gutowski, and Gabbie Hanna.
She has made the transition to TV & film
You may be wondering how in the world Koshy has time to squeeze anything else into her already packed schedule. Yet, she has ventured into scripted acting, too. In 2016, she starred as Aday in the Tyler Perry movie Boo! A Madea Halloween. She is currently also starring in Hulu’s original supernatural teen series Freakish as Violet Adams.
“None of us had friends going into this, and then we all came out with friends, so it’s great,” Koshy joked of the close-knit cast during an interview at New York Comic Con. Fortunately for the new friends, they’ll be spending a lot more time together — the series was picked up for a second season, which is currently streaming on Hulu.
She makes bank
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There’s money to be made on social media, especially for personalities with as much natural charisma as Koshy. As of October 2017, she has more than 12 million subscribers to her original YouTube channel and boasts more than 1.2 billion views. Those figures are enough to slide her channel into the 84th spot on YouTube’s Top 100 Most Subscribed Channels List. But how does that translate into dollars and cents? According to the Gazette Review, Koshy utilizes a combination of sponsorship and endorsement deals, brand partnerships and ads to monetize her work on YouTube and other social media platforms. When her TV and film roles are factored in, Koshy has an estimated net worth of $1.5 million.
She still makes rookie mistakes (almost)
One particularly likable trait about Koshy is the fact she keeps it real with her fans — and that includes spilling potentially embarrassing social media mishaps. “Um, there was this one time that I was Snapchatting my bath bomb in the bath tub, and there’s that little mirror thing that shows when you, like… like, it like reflects your body. So I was taking a picture; I was just about to upload it when I realized that my breasteses [sic] were in it! It was so bad,” she revealed to Clevver News’ Jackie Iadonisi, adding of the nearly naked moment, “It was so bad. I never posted it.”
She has a dance background
Although Koshy is forthcoming about her life on her own YouTube channel — often using it as comedic fodder — she occasionally divulges fun facts on other channels, too. In one such example, Koshy was the subject of the popular YouTube series “Draw Their Life”, which pieces together facts about her life story based on what she has revealed herself in her videos.
Among the little known tidbits unearthed about the YouTube personality was the fact that she has a background in dance. “While Liza was in high school, she was captain of her dance team. She loved to dance. Also, she is an amazing dancer,” the segment explains before lightheartedly featuring a clip of Koshy twerking in the back seat of a friend’s car.
She’s an award-winning creator
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It was only a matter of time before Koshy started getting the awards show treatment for her killer content creation skills. At the 2017 Teen Choice Awards, she and fellow YouTube sensation Logan Paul took home surfboard trophies for “Choice Web Star.” She has also won two Streamy Awards — for “Breakout Creator” in 2016 and “Comedy” in 2017 — and been nominated for several other awards, including a People’s Choice Award and a Shorty Award.
She has a second, lesser-known YouTube channel
Subscribers to Koshy’s flagship channel have grown accustomed to “new videos every Wednezzzday with Lizzza,” but that isn’t the only time or place Koshy is posting new content each week. She created a second channel called “Liza Koshy Too” on which she uploads more LOL-inducing videos. Examples include Koshy trying on baby costumes (“My head is the size of a six-month-year old”) and reacting to her old cringe-worthy photos (“I never had a glow-up — I had a no-up”). She’s clearly doing something right, because Koshy’s second channel has already amassed more than five million subscribers.
Her dream collaboration is Beyonce
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Stick around long enough, and you’re bound to hear Koshy give a shout-out to Beyoncé. As it turns out, Koshy is a big fan of her fellow Houston native — so much so, in fact, that she’d love to work with Queen B at some point in the future. During an episode of TRL, co-host DC Young Fly asked Koshy, “Now, if you could make any video with anybody, dead or alive, who would you do it with?” Showing off her quick wit, Koshy playfully quipped back, “Uh, hopefully someone alive.” However, she continued to reveal her true dream collab. “Probably Beyoncé,” she said. “I gotta give it to the queen. You know, Queen B.”
She gives back
Koshy may be at the start of her career, but she already understands that she can levy her influence for the greater good. She has collaborated on a collection of necklaces with The Giving Keys, a jewelry company through which every product purchase supports job creation for those transitioning out of homelessness. To date, the company has provided more than 70 job opportunities to such individuals through their unique “pay it forward” community model. Each necklace (including the designs in Koshy’s collection) are stamped with an inspirational word such as trust, hope, or laugh. The Giving Keys encourages those who purchase necklaces to “embrace your word, then pay it forward by giving your product to a person who needs the message.”