Viral sensation dishes on her rise to internet fame in new interview
Country star Zach Bryan extended Haliey Welch’s 15 minutes of fame when he invited the internet personality, famously known as the “Hawk Tuah” girl, to join him onstage at Nashville’s Nissan Stadium on Saturday.
If you don’t know who she is — and after coming back from a week in Las Vegas, I’ll admit I hadn’t heard of her — Welch, 21, became a social media superstar after she shared her bold go-to sex tip in a viral interview that blew up on YouTube, Twitter and TikTok.
Welch’s unfiltered, X-rated reply was an instant hit when she cheekily responded, “You gotta give ’em that ‘hawk tuah’ and spit on that thang.”
“She’s probably one of the most well-known people in the world at this point. But I don’t know if she’s embraced it,” Fathead Threads brand manager Jason Poteete told the outlet.
“Of course, she hasn’t gotten a dime from the first viral video that went out. Nobody was asking permission for her to do nothing, neither. I just wanted her to get some profit off of this deal.”
Poteete told Rolling Stone that Welch has already sold more than 2,000 “Hawk Tuah ‘24” hats.
“Our largest orders are usually 100 hats, maybe 150 to 250 shirts. This is way out of the normal for us,” Poteete said. “This is a small, family-owned shop. We’re all-hands-on-deck right now.”
Bryan hauled Welch onstage Saturday night to help him sing his hit song Revival. Clutching a drink in one hand, Welch was clad in jean shorts, a white crop top, white cowboy boots and a cowboy hat.
Various fan-captured videos of her appearance have racked up millions of views, with the crowd cheering wildly when Welch gave a boisterous “Hawk Tuah” to the audience.
“This girl single-handedly saved the month of June,” a third fan quipped.
In her first interview with Bryan’s girlfriend Briana LaPaglia on Monday, Welch reflected on her newfound fame telling her Plan Bri Uncut podcast that she “s— a brick” when she discovered she had become internet famous.
Welch had learned she had gone “massive” as she was getting ready to work her graveyard shift at a spring factory.
“I was like, ‘Oh, this is kind of funny. It’s not going to get any bigger than this,’” when she first saw the video taking off. “I went back an hour later and the views had gone up by like a million.”
As her fame took off, Welch said she’s gotten the oddest requests. “The guy that does my hats got offered $600 three days ago for me to spit in a jar and sell it,” she revealed. “This is revolting. That’s just disgusting, is it not?”
Going forward, Welch, who has obtained a talent agent, says she doesn’t want to be known as the “Hawk Tuah” girl.
“I was being a smarta–,” she told LaPaglia. “You’re going to come up to me with a microphone and ask me something like that? I’m gonna ‘hawk tuah and spit on it,’” she laughed. “I (didn’t) mean nothing by it.”