Clara has done PR for the bluest-checked of all: Adele, J.Lo, Taylor Swift, Matt Damon, Aaron Rodgers, Lea Michele, the Kardashians, the Queen…!
Well, kind of. Clara does satiric PR videos, recording simulated one-sided conversations between the biggest celebrities alive and their hapless (hilarious) PR agent. Her videos are perfectly timed in all senses of the word — they drop right when a celebrity’s snafu has reached peak absurdity or attention, while her subtle facial expressions (a quick eyebrow raise here, a small curl of the lip there) elevate already funny dialogue to giggle out loud heights. They almost always go viral, regularly racking up hundreds of thousands of views.
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It took me a long time to figure out the very funny “TikTok P.R. woman” was also one of my favorite Substack writers: the author of culture and culture-adjacent newsletter
.I mean! More talent in her fingertip and all that. I talked to Clara to learn more about how she’s reacted to going viral, whether pop culture is “serious,” her thoughts on being unmarried and sans kids in her thirties, and more.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
Aja: I did my homework before this interview — or I tried to. There is so little about you online. All I could find was you were born in Uruguay and now live in New York. No last name, no day job... It's quite impressive. Was this a conscious decision?
Clara: Yes. Some people online are a little bit crazy, and the more followers I got, the more I didn’t want people to know the details of my life.
And most jobs are boring — including mine. It’s a traditional corporate job. I don’t think it’s important to who I am as a person or creator.
How does eliding that part of your life on social change your relationship with your followers?
There's a tendency for content creators, especially people who gain an audience quickly, to get main character syndrome — thinking everyone needs to know their opinion on everything. I have to be really careful with that.
— the host of Search Engine and former host of Reply All — said going viral is like going up on your balcony and shouting… and suddenly there’s a ton of people gathered below you, and they’re reacting to what you just yelled. It’s such a disorienting, strange, uniquely now experience. And I think it’s addicting.You want to avoid becoming the most obnoxious version of yourself. The Internet is really good at quickening that process: you can be a normal person and six months later have hundreds of thousands of followers. And it's like, Oh, my God, I'm really important. No, you’re not.
I get a lot of engagement. I’m so grateful for the audience I have. But the algorithm could change tomorrow, and I could stop getting all of these views, and it’d just be my mom and friends watching.
You want to avoid becoming the most obnoxious version of yourself. The Internet is really good at quickening that process.
A newsletter is so different than a TikTok video. What led you to start one?
Since I was a kid, I’ve written in my free time. It was a natural pivot, but people who follow me [on TikTok] didn't necessarily know writing comes more naturally to me than performing — which I guess is what you would consider TikTok and Instagram. The newsletter’s a home for all of my extended thoughts on pop culture and culture in general. I love the newsletter so much: it’s such a nice, peaceful medium.
Your writing takes pop culture seriously, which I really appreciate. There’s a lot of sexism in the way pop culture is treated — as superficial — but it’s a microcosm for our world.
Pop culture is general. It impacts so much of our day to day. The way celebrities and public figures act and are treated informs the way regular people act. Especially when you’re growing up, pop culture is such a big part of your life. I feel like people treat it as irrelevant because mostly women follow it. Maybe that’s a generalization, but that's how it feels.
Did you ever struggle with your deep interest in something that isn’t always treated with gravity?
Honestly, the biggest obstacle is usually myself. Am I taking this too seriously?
I went through a phase where I struggled with it. Maybe when I was really invested in Deuxmoi.
That’s a little different!
It is, but it’s caring about what's happening on a plane that’s unconnected to my day to day life. Deuxmoi was a manifestation of that.
I unfollowed [Deuxmoi] because it didn’t feel healthy. There’s different levels of interest in pop culture. Where did Camila Morrone get her coffee this morning? is different from Why does Leo always date women under 26?
Yeah, for me it was never the Sunday Spotted: so and so is eating at Parm, having a cigarette on Bleeker and Broadway. It was the blinds: “Leo’s dating another 24 year old.” Oh, my God, another 24-year-old.
I definitely examined it. At the same time, my interest in reality TV came fairly late. It was during the pandemic, and I think it was initially borne from not having a social life. Reality TV was the closest analogue. Then you get sucked into the vortex, and next thing you know you’ve watched Love Is Blind: After the Altar director’s cut.
I watched the first two seasons of Love Is Blind, and it was so depressing. I couldn’t do it anymore. These people are insane.
It definitely gets more and more exploitative by the season.
Let’s talk about some of the non-pop culture pieces you’ve written for your newsletter. Specifically, are women allowed to become Adults without motherhood? This was timely for me, because I’m in my late twenties, and a lot of my peers have young kids.
You wrote: “We — rightfully! — praise working moms for the extra load they carry, while neglecting the notion that child-free women at work also have personal lives they need to juggle alongside their jobs. It is regularly impressed upon us that mothering is the only worthy occupation away from work that women are allowed to undertake as an overriding priority over their jobs.”
I turned 30 this year. Over the last few years, a lot of my peers started having children, and I’ve sensed a difference in the treatment women receive before and after they become mothers.
It feels like motherhood is the final achievement to unlock in womanhood. And until you unlock that, you’re not taken as seriously as you could be as an adult.
I keep wondering, When am I going to be taken as seriously as I deserve to be taken?
It feels like motherhood is the final achievement to unlock in womanhood. And until you unlock that, you’re not taken as seriously as you could be as an adult.
Yes.
I don’t think people do it consciously. They’re like, Oh, Clara can take this because Ashley — and there's no Ashley; it’s just a name — has a birthday party for her kid. Absolutely, Ashley should get the time that she deserves with her family. But why does Ashley get respect for her time off with her children, and meanwhile people are like, “Clara doesn’t really have anything going on,” as if motherhood is the only reason to prioritize something outside of work?
[Non-parents] have friends. We have family. We have hobbies. I have a very rich and full life, and I shouldn't need children to expect respect for that life outside of work.
I posted a story on Instagram before I wrote the [essay], and I got hundreds of responses from women: “I’m in my thirties, forties, fifties. This never stops if you don't have children.”
I’m not saying mothers and parents don't deserve that time. I'm saying that that respect, when given, should be given across the board.
[Pause]
It’s a tricky subject for me to talk about, because I don’t want parents who work to feel like I’m dragging or blaming them for my lack of balance. It’s not the parents’ fault. It’s the culture.
You make a really good point. The dynamic between parents and non-parents shifts the focus away from the employer and the culture. It should not be about, “Does Ashley or Clara pick up the slack?” It should be, “Why are two people practicing work-life balance not equipped to handle the full workload they are being asked to handle?”
So many women are making the choice to not have children or to delay motherhood. There are so many of us in the same position where we're waiting to maybe, one day, be treated like the adults we are.
There's the same effect, maybe to a lesser degree, with marriage. I’ve started to get so many questions about when I’m getting married, and it shocks me because it’s like the least interesting thing about me.
100%. I feel like if you’re not married, people expect you to be actively searching for the status of spouse.
There are so many benefits to marriage that once existed for women that no longer exist. And I think people have a hard time understanding that, especially generationally.
We're waiting to maybe, one day, be treated like the adults we are.
I can open my own bank accounts now —
You can own land!
I can own land! I make my own money. There’s so many parts of marriage, like the functional benefits of the institution, that are less and less relevant as time goes on. Unless I meet someone who I want to try to spend the rest of my life with, rushing into the institution is not a huge priority. There are so many things that I want to do.
There’s an assumption if you’ve hit a certain amount of milestones in life, you must also have hit the marriage milestone.
And that’s the culminating milestone.
Right before mother.
Right before mother. OK, it’s a rapid-fire question round. In the spirit of your book review podcast, One More Chapter, give me an author who’s shamefully underrated.
I’m a big classics fan, and I am of the opinion Jane Austen is underrated. In the same way that Beyoncé is underrated. Do you know what I mean? Because they’re so capital G Great and have such an impact on their genre and industry and culture. We don’t have the genius that is romantic comedy without Jane Austen’s influence.
I also really like Percival Everett, an American author who’s one of the most prolific contemporary writers. He has written dozens and dozens of books. I wish more people read his work because it’s brilliant.
I just added his books on GoodReads. What about shamefully overrated?
I'm gonna be a little mean. The poet Rupi Kaur is one of the most cringy people that I have ever read or seen in my entire life.
She’s fallen off a little bit in the last few years, but there was a point a few years ago when you could not open Instagram without seeing a picture of a cup of coffee with a wilted flower and a couple of lines from Rupi’s poems. It was harrowing. I love Tumblr, but Tumblr made her happen, and I will never forgive it for that.
There was a real Milk and Honey phase.
I couldn’t believe so many of my friends were falling for it. I'm like, journal if that's what you need to do to feel something.
[Laughing] I think it was a lot of people’s first exposure to poetry. Hopefully they kept going. What is always worth the money?
Coffee. I will always spend money on coffee. During the pandemic, baristas were one of the few people I saw, and I formed a real bond with them at my local coffee shop. They learned my order; we have banter. I will always spend time and money to patronize a local coffee shop.
I love the relationships you can form with the people you see for three minutes every day.
It’s so important, and you don’t realize how important until you don’t have those third places.
If you had a vacation home in one place, where would it be?
I’m secretly a pretty big nature person, but in a chill way, like, I love going on nice hikes and long walks, so — not to sound very Dolly Parton in the seventies — at the foot of a mountain somewhere.
Kindle or physical book?
Physical. I have towers of books all over my apartment. I love turning a page, the feeling of a pencil on the page, and little marginalia. It creates a connection with what you’re reading that I personally don’t get with a Kindle.
I was reading a physical book — which is actually rare for me. I’m largely Kindle. It was a used copy, and the main character cheats on her partner. Someone had written Booooo :( It was such a little moment of connection with the previous reader.
What's your favorite podcast?
Do you listen to You Must Remember This? It’s by Karina Longworth (such a gorgeous name). Each series is about a different part of Hollywood history.
She did one on famous Hollywood blondes — Marilyn Monroe and Jane Mansfield — and how they were mistreated by the industry. It’s very informed and she delivers it in a theatrical way I really enjoy.
If you’re a Donna Tartt fan, Once Upon a Time at Bennington College was super interesting. You don’t really know anything about Donna Tartt and her history. It was fun to delve into that.
I will always be chasing the high I got from The Secret History.
I was just telling someone I need to reread it — it’s such a fall/winter book. You can’t read it in the spring or summer; it wouldn’t hit the same. I think it’s at my parents house.
You can read your old marginalia!
Yes!!
Follow Clara on TikTok, Substack, and Instagram. And if you enjoyed this Q&A, check out our interviews with:
Grossy Pelosi, NYT-bestselling cookbook author and self-professed anchovy doula
Leslie Stephens, novelist, counselor, and one of Substack’s top culture writers
Hannah Stella, viral housewife turned successful single writer
Valerie Monroe, former beauty director at O, and advocate for not f*cking up your face
And ICYMI: Monday’s most popular link was
’s gift giving guide. (Lots of people getting a head start on the holidays this year!)We’ll be back on Monday with the latest roundup of links we sent our friends! Talk to you then.
Love, Aja
Platonic Love is an entirely reader-supported, affiliate-free publication. Thank you so much for supporting us and helping us to keep this newsletter running. Got questions? Or an idea for a future issue? Leave us a comment or reply directly to get in touch. xx
REALLY love Clara's clever videos. Such a fun - and insightful - interview.
Thank you, Aja -- it was so lovely chatting with you! (Justice for Rupi, who is still cringey but was very brave this last week 💚)