Just call Emma Chamberlain YouTube royalty! The internet personality got her start in 2017 when she uploaded her first video. From that point on, her fame continued to rise and her millions of subscribers have watched her evolve over the years.
In a rare sit-down interview on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast in January 2022, the California native looked back on her whirlwind rise to internet fame and how she went from normal teenager to walking the Met Gala red carpet and becoming a brand ambassador for Louis Vuitton. During the 48-minute podcast episode, Emma discussed her childhood in San Bruno, California, and how being “very bored a lot of the time” helped her become “more curious” in the long run.
During one of her early YouTube videos, Emma briefly looked back at her start on the video-sharing site and how it stemmed from struggles she was experiencing at school.
“Over the summer, I was posting almost every day for a while there. I was vlogging on my vacations. I mean, I was hardcore on that YouTube grind, like you best believe. I loved it. It was so great, fully pulled me out of my depression, one hundred percent,” the Chamberlain Coffee founder explained in her October 2017 video. “It kind of gave me this feeling of hope that depression wasn’t ruling my life. I had something else that was making me happy, and that was YouTube. And it still is, to this day, continues to do that for me – and I’m eternally grateful.”
Eventually, Emma made the decision to leave her private school and do Youtube full-time, a decision which she looked back on during her “Call Her Daddy” episode.
“I had an interesting experience with high school because, basically, I was a really academically-driven student. I was obsessed with the idea of going to a super prestigious college, and I was willing to do anything to get there,” the YouTube star recalled, noting that she decided to go to an “all-girls Catholic school.” After the first year she “hated it” and realized that she “made a big f–king mistake.”
So, after her sophomore year, she started her YouTube channel because she was “depressed.” By the end of that summer, Emma recalled “making money.”
“Junior year, I was like, ‘OK this is the year I take hard classes.’ I was taking three AP classes,” the internet star said. “Long story story, it was just so — I couldn’t do school work and YouTube. But I was like, obviously, school work is more important.”
From there, Emma decided to take easier classes until her YouTube continued to grow, which “changed everything.”
Scroll through our gallery to look back at Emma’s rise to fame in her own words.
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