Haliey Welch, a.k.a. Hawk Tuah, Tries to Explain Herself

This time last May, Haliey Welch was working at a spring factory in her native Tennessee. Twelve months later…well, are you familiar with the phrase “hawk tuah”?

Welch went viral last summer after using that colorful turn of phrase to describe how best to please a male lover. “It happened very fast,” she says over Zoom from her home “in the sticks” of Tennessee. Welch’s camera may be off, but her voice—that deep Southern twang coupled with a perkiness befitting an anthropomorphized cartoon chipmunk—is unmistakable. “I don’t really consider myself a celebrity. When I go out to grocery stores and stuff, and people are staring at me, I’m like, What are they looking at? Then I’m like, Wait…oh yeah. I don’t know. It don’t feel real to me.”

That’s surprising to hear from Welch—since unlike many flash in the pan internet presences, she’s managed to sustain her viral fame. Welch has sold thousands of dollars of merchandise, amassed millions of followers on social media, and started a hit podcast called, what else, Talk Tuah.

But her notoriety has also come with consequences. At the end of 2024, Welch began hawking (get it?!) a meme coin, $HAWK, which she and her partners at OverHere claimed would “redefine the crypto space.” But within 20 minutes of launching, $HAWK lost more than 90% of its value—falling from a peak of $490 million to $60 million. Soon, Welch and her partners were being accused of participating in a “rug-pull scheme,” with detractors claiming that they quickly, and intentionally, inflated the value of $HAWK, then sold off their coins—causing $HAWK’s value to crash and allegedly leaving many regular people holding the bag. “I am a huge fan of Hawk Tuah but you took my life savings,” wrote one X user.

“I hate that that’s even a thing,” Welch says now of the crypto mess. “Half of those people that done it were, like, my fans. They trusted me, like, guiding them to it. And I don’t know…it really hurt my feelings when it turned out the way it did. I wish it hadn’t have happened.”

In the immediate fallout, Welch’s team maintained that there had been no “pump and dump” scam. “Team hasn’t sold one token,” Welch wrote on her personal X account on December 4, though the post has since been deleted. Nevertheless, crypto influencers like journalist Stephen Findeisen, better known as Coffeezilla, ripped Welch a new one for the alleged scam, and several investors in $HAWK filed a complaint with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. On March 31, the SEC closed an investigation into Welch, finding “no evidence” against the influencer.

Her initial response to the drama was to disappear. On December 4, Welch ended an X livestream with the famous last words, “Anyhoo, I’m gonna go bed”; just like that, her podcast and social media channels went dark for about three months. Where was she? At home in Tennessee, being “a 24/7 dog mom,” she says. “It was nice.” Welch also had human companionship: her boyfriend, Kelby Blackwell, whom podcast listeners may know as Pookie.

But a celebrity can only be a dog mom and girlfriend for so long. On March 25, Welch returned to social media and started her podcast again. Her dream guests? Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus. “Those are just the women I’ve always looked up to,” she says. “I hate how Britney turned out because of the things she was put through. But her book that she came out with, it explains a good bit of it, why she’s the way she is now. I don’t know. She’s inspiring.”

Given her roller-coaster year, the exceedingly polite Welch can probably relate a bit more to Spears’s saga now. “I see things a lot differently than I used to,” she says. “My eyes are open a lot wider.”

Below, Welch chats with Vanity Fair about taking a much-needed mental health break, her acting aspirations, and how she learned to embrace being Hawk Tuah.

Vanity Fair: You recently took an extended break from public life. How does it feel now to be back in the spotlight?

Haliey Welch: Um, it’s definitely been a little bit of a struggle, but I feel like rebuilding is what I needed to do. And it’s my perfect chance to rebuild now, so that’s really what I’m working on.

Some of the comments you get on Instagram are so mean. Do you read comments? How do you handle them?

I do my best not to read ’em, but sometimes you just can’t help yourself. Everybody’s entitled to an opinion, obviously, but I don’t know. I try not to let it get me down.

Obviously, there was the meme coin incident. Of course, it’s a complicated issue.

Of course.

I can barely understand it myself. Crypto is so confusing.

Yeah, I don’t really understand it much myself either [laughs]. I don’t know. It was one of those things that just happened, and I feel sorry for everybody that just lost money…. I don’t know. I’ve learned from that. You got to be really careful what you tie your name to, and you definitely need to know what you’re getting yourself into when you agree to do it. That’s something I definitely should have done beforehand. I don’t know. It’s a crazy world we live in.

What have you learned from that experience? Do you have anything to say to the people who lost their money?

I would say, personally, what I learned from it…let’s see…I don’t know. I just feel really bad for anybody that lost money. All my comments, if you read those, people are like, “Oh, well, I lost a lot of money in this. Now my kids have to go without stuff.” I don’t know. It makes me feel, like, really sorry for it.

After the crypto scandal, you went off the grid. What were you doing for those three months? Where were you?

Oh, I hate to say this, but it was a much-needed mental health—just…what do you call it? A mental health break, I guess, is what you can call it.

I would see my friends. I would go out and eat. That’s really about it. I don’t ever get out and do much when I’m home. I like being by myself.

How badly did the scandal affect your mental health?

I would say it probably didn’t get as bad as it did when the video—like, my interview on Broadway [in Nashville]—got leaked, but it was almost the same. I don’t know. It’s really overwhelming. Your whole life’s basically online, and then people can say anything they want to you. And then you got to sit there with the thought, Oh, a lot of people just lost money because of something you did, like, [something] you led them to. You got to be really strong to be in this kind of space, I feel like.

Can you talk a little bit about that roller coaster: the “hawk tuah” video being so terrible for your mental health, but also creating all these amazing opportunities?

Yeah. It took me a while to finally see that too. I’ve always been a person that just kind of kept to myself. I would go to work, I’d hang out with my friends, and I’d just stay out of everybody’s way. I wasn’t really on social media much besides Snapchat.

But everything changed after that interview. I’ve always been one to struggle with mental health, and I’m still struggling with it a little bit. But it’s been like…I just kept getting kicked when I was down. It’s something I never in a million years would’ve expected. But then I was like, Okay, everybody else is making money off of it, and they’re not even the ones that got interviewed, you know? So I wanted to do something about it. And the first thing I did, I went and found an attorney, and then he led me to my team that I’m with now. [As of December 2024, Welch had in fact been represented by Los Angeles–based PR firm the Agency Group. On April 1, that firm confirmed to Vanity Fair that it was no longer representing Welch. She’s now with Penthouse Management.]

You recently parted ways with Jake Paul and his production company, Betr. How did you make that decision?

It was kind of a mutual thing to go our separate ways, but we’re not on any bad terms. They’re great people and they’ve done a lot for me. Jake Paul, he’s good as gold. He was the one to give me the opportunity.

How do you feel about being known as the “hawk tuah” girl? Are you tired of that?

Honestly, at first I was like, I need to move away from that because that one moment shouldn’t define me. But that moment made me, so it’s part of my…I don’t want to say part of my brand, but it’s definitely part of me, and it’s something I will never escape from. So I’ve kind of just embraced it.

I would love to know what you have to say about the incident in early February when a canceled episode of Talk Tuah about the crypto scandal briefly appeared online, then was removed from the internet. YouTuber FaZe Banks was on the show, and he’s accused your team of “leaking” the canceled Talk Tuah episode to further manipulate the markets. Do you have anything to say about that?

Amy Sisoyev [Welch’s publicist]: Oh, we can’t speak on that. I’m sorry.

You went viral in the lead-up to the presidential election. A lot of people were projecting their politics onto you and making assumptions about your own political beliefs. You became sort of a political figure by accident. What was that like?

[Long pause] Yeah, I don’t know if I consider myself a political figure. I try not to get into politics too much. I don’t know. It’s too much beyond me to understand.

It was kind of a breath of fresh air, because everybody stopped fighting about who they’re voting for. And I don’t know—it kind of just made everybody laugh in the middle of it.

You could have done anything you wanted after becoming a celebrity overnight. You could have made a reality show, you could have gone on TV, you could have done anything. Why did you decide to go the podcasting route?

I really liked the podcast route because it was a way for me and Chelsea [Bradford] to do something together. And it’s not scripted. We can say whatever we want on there. We can express ourselves. We can get guests on there, and then they’re entitled to say whatever they’d like to on there. I don’t know. I’m just not much of a reality-TV [person], I guess.

What are your future plans for the podcast?

So my plans for the podcast right now are just rebuilding it, rebranding, and then trying to get really good guests on so more people will start watching it. I don’t know. It feels good because now I’m the official owner of it, so it’s my show and I can make it however I want to.

When you’re not podcasting, what do you do for fun? What brings you joy right now?

I really like cooking. I like flower shopping. That’s really my favorite thing to do.

What’s your favorite flower?

Oh man, you got me. Let’s see [long pause]…probably a peony. They smell so good.

It’s so nice that you and Chelsea have been successful and managed to stay friends. Do you guys ever see or talk to Tim Dickerson and DeArius Marlow, the creators of Tim & Dee TV, who asked you that question on the street?

Absolutely not. We just kind of parted ways with them. I don’t really know if there’s bad blood there or not. It’s not from our end, but I think from their end it definitely is. But I don’t know. I never wished anything bad on them. [Editor’s note: In two separate statements issued to Vanity Fair, Dickerson and Marlow denied there being any bad blood with Welch on their end. Marlow said that he believes Welch “definitely [has] ‘ill will’ towards us,” and that his cocreator “genuinely wanted the best” and “tried to help her.” Dickerson said the following: “We don’t have any bad blood or ill will towards her. We just don’t like how we were portrayed in the situation.” They both further addressed their feelings toward Welch in a YouTube video.]

So they’re not going to come on the podcast or anything like that?

Probably not [laughs].

Is it harder to trust people now, after all this has happened?

I would say so. It’s not really that it;s hard to trust people. It really makes you sit there and question them more than you probably would have before. Just because you don’t want to get in another pickle.