The Internet’s latest main character, Hailey “Hawk Tuah Girl” Welch, has officially started making the podcast rounds, giving her first interview to Brianna LaPaglia on the Plan Bri podcast.
LaPaglia shared a 13-minute chat with Welch on YouTube, which looked like it was recorded backstage at Zach Bryan’s concert in Nashville over the weekend, where Welch made an on-stage cameo (it was a fitting bit of brand/relationship synergy, too, as LaPaglia and Bryan are dating). In it, Welch spoke about the good, the bad, and the weird about going viral — she’s already quit her job and gotten a manager, is making plans to try her luck in Los Angeles or New York, and fielding exactly the kind of bizarre requests you’d expect.
“The guy that sells my hats, he got offered $600, like three days ago, for me to spit in a jar and sell it — that is revolting!” Welch cracked at one point. “I was like, ‘Should I do it?’ And I was like, ‘Nah, don’t do that.’”
Welch spoke about filming the now-famous on-the-street interview, in which she was asked to name a sex move that makes a man go crazy, and responded with the immortal words, “You gotta give ’em that ‘hawk tuah’ and spit on that thang!” Welch said that, earlier that night, she’d been hanging around Nashville during CMA Fest when someone came up to her with a microphone. She told LaPaglia she had no qualms about participating, quipping, “I could talk to a brick wall if you really let me.”
Welch went on to say she didn’t expect to ever see or hear about the video again until it went viral a few weeks after it had been posted. She first realized it had blown up after seeing it on her phone at two in the morning, before work. Welch then noted she worked at a “spring factory” — not as a teacher or bartender as many had speculated — though LaPaglia did not follow up on the very important issues of what exactly Welch did at the spring factory or why her shift there started so early.
Anyway, Welch also rebuffed another internet rumor: that her dad is a preacher. (“My father is so far from a preacher, it’s crazy.”) And she revealed that her parents find the whole thing “so funny,” adding, “They know how I am though. Because you can never tell what comes out of my mouth — it’s a hit or miss what comes out of my mouth.”
As for what’s next, Welch has already assembled a small management team around her and seems keen on making sure she’s not just known as the “Hawk Tuah Girl.” Though she didn’t reveal any concrete plans, Welch said, “I think we’re gonna do like a show, then we’re just gonna be on a bunch of podcasts, and everything else in between… There’s more to come, don’t worry.”
