Hailey Welch used to wake up at 3:30 a.m. every morning to go to work at a spring factory in Belfast, Tennessee.
But on June 9, while she was walking down Broadway in Nashville during CMA Fest, a YouTuber filmed a video of her making a sex joke and posted it online.
Now Welch is asleep.
She has an online audience of billions of views, just from media impressions. And that doesn’t even include views on TikTok or Instagram, which are so massive they’re hard to quantify. She’s appeared on stage with Zach Bryan at his Nashville show, and she’s hung out with Shaquille O’Neal at JBJ’s on Broadway.
Before the viral video was posted, Welch was not active on social media. Today, she is arguably the most famous girl on the internet.
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USA TODAY spoke with Welch, now known as the “Hawk Tuah girl,” and learned the truth about her amid a frenzy of social media rumors about the 21-year-old. This was her second interview, after sitting down with Brianna LaPaglia (aka Zach Bryan’s girlfriend) for her podcast “Plan Bri.”
Who is the girl “Hawk Tuah”?
Welch lives with her “grandma” about 60 miles south of Nashville, Tenn. She has never driven on the interstate and has never flown.
Now she has to deal with media outlets monitoring her grandmother’s house, internet trolls saying mean (and untrue) things about her, and people misrepresenting her identity and selling merchandise with her likeness that she didn’t authorize and from which she makes no profit.
She may be from a small town, but she’s savvy. Welch is turning what started as a nuisance into a career. She’s assembled a team that includes a lawyer, a management company and a public relations agency. The team arranges entertaining appearances that cost upwards of $25,000 each, according to her manager, Jonnie Forster, owner of the Los Angeles-based management company The Penthouse.
“Right now, she can make more money holding a can for five minutes than she did all last year,” Forster said.
Welch said she never thought anyone would ever see her now-infamous video. But just after posting it in early June, she saw how many views it was getting.
“The first week, I was so embarrassed,” Welch told The Tennessean. “I didn’t leave the house. I went to work, but that was it. Other than that, I didn’t go anywhere. But I went from being embarrassed to living in the moment.”
When she saw that the products were being made and sold online by other people, she thought, “If everyone else is making money from this, I might as well.”
She left her job at the spring factory on June 27.
Was ‘Hawk Tuah’s’ Daughter Fired From Her Teaching Job?
Despite this and many other rumors circulating the internet about Welch, she was not fired from her teaching job. She was never a teacher and was not fired from her real job. The TikTok video of a man pretending to be her father, a pastor, is also fake. Her father is not a pastor and is not the man in the video.
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“The negative comments bother me,” she said. “I mean, when you go through that, you’re like, ‘Well, you don’t know anything about me.’ I just make funny jokes. That’s how I joke. That’s my sense of humor.”
That’s where Forster and entertainment lawyer Christian Barker come in.
“We’re here to protect the falcon from the vultures,” Forster said.
Barker first came into contact with Welch through his work with the juvenile system in Lewisburg, near his hometown.
He met her and was immediately taken with her personality.
“She’s such a sweet girl,” Barker said. “She’s in the spotlight, but she has the opportunity to capitalize on it. She’s less dirty and more funny. She’s like the female Theo Von. Once people meet her, they’re skeptical about how she got there, but once they meet her, they’re like, ‘Wow, this girl’s got something.’”
What’s next for Hailey Welch?
Now it’s up to Welch and his team to figure out what to do with their “something.”
“After we met her, we were trying to figure out why all the podcasters were calling her ‘America’s Sweetheart,’” Forster said. “From a branding and marketing perspective, I was just trying to figure out why everyone fell in love with this girl.”
If you ask Welch why she thinks the viral video has resonated with so many people, she says it’s because of her deep Southern accent.
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“Most of the comments are like, ‘Oh, we love her accent,’ even though I have a pretty strong accent,” she said. “I lived with my grandmother my whole life. That’s how I was raised.”
Barker said the most important thing for Welch now is to make sure she pivots in a way that makes sense.
“She will have several unscripted television options on the table as well as a huge merchandising setup that can help her launch and get paid for the merchandising that is available,” he said.
She and her team created a company, 16 Minutes, with a logo featuring a hawk wearing a cowboy hat. Forster says that way people will know they’re buying her products and not a knockoff.
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What does the daughter of “Hawk Tuah” want to do with her life?
Right now, she’s focused on getting back on social media so people can connect with the real Hailey Welch and not the imposters posing as her online. She’s looking forward to her first plane ride to New York and California, both scheduled for later this month.
One thing is for sure, there is no going back.
“We just want to tell her story,” Forster said. “She didn’t ask for it. She didn’t even have social media. She’s kind of the antithesis of anyone who’s trying to be a social media star. She lives with her grandmother in Belfast, went out partying and said something stupid and now everyone’s talking about her.”
But for Welch, despite everything that’s happened in her life over the past three weeks, nothing has affected who she is.
“I’m nobody special. I’m just a small town girl.”
Melonee Hurt covers music and the music industry for The Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY Network — Tennessee. Contact Melonee at mhurt@tennessean.comon X @HurtMelonee or Instagram at @MelHurtWrites.