Who is the ‘Hawk Tuh’ lady? Haley Welch on popularity, Trump, comedy business

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it’s summer It’s a July morning in Nashville and Haley Welch has ordered her first café Cubano. Sitting in a booth at the nearly empty Pinewood Social, a usually bustling tourist spot along the Cumberland River, she takes a sip of the sweet concoction and lets out an exaggerated cry of joy, as if she’s just swallowed liquid gold. Have tasted. “Chelsea!” She yells to her friend, Chelsea Bradford, who is at a sales location. “You have to try some of this!”

The now immortal pitch is being pronounced “hawk tuh” (pronounced “hawk tuh”), since a video of Welch yes too-ä) The nationwide awareness was part of the ultimate future, for the 21-year-old the present has been an endless series of firsts, both mundane and humiliating. The native of Belfast, Tennessee (Public 700) flew her first plane, appeared on stage at a stadium live performance, racked up millions of fans on Instagram, and now sits down for her first national interview, with Rolling stone,

It’s all a result of how she answered a question about the sex business by late-night YouTubers Tim Dickerson and Darius Marlow in Nashville earlier this summer. “You’ve got to give them that ‘hawk tuh’ and spit on that thang!” Welch said, making a spitting sound at the camera.

When written, Welch’s decision sounds cheap and stupid, but the way she presents it in the clip exudes innocence. Here was a blooming, smiling, fresh-faced peasant woman describing oral intercourse without any trace of sexuality, in the same awkward way that a decidedly likable country music singer jokes about her breasts. Makes. When she’s probably not singing or writing songs, the “Hawk Tuh Girl,” as she’s known, exudes the charm and magnetism of a Gen Z Dolly Parton.

As she drinks her coffee and eats breakfast potatoes, two servers and the restaurant manager stop by the booth separately to gauge Welch’s happiness. For a group, they’re clearly excited. When? Rupees Was in the same restaurant in those days when Jack White, the guys from stranger issues Solid, and with national stars such as the Brothers Osborne present, the staff team was disappointed. In time, a used diner would stop Welch and inspire her: “Keep doing what you’re doing, honey.”

However this begs the question: what exactly is Welch? does,

At this point, it’s almost impossible to say, but two days before our breakfast, Welch was in Castle Lauderdale to judge a bikini contest at the Seminole Hardened Rock Hotel and Casino. She wore a mask aboard her Southwest Gliding to avoid detection, but was busted by a passenger as she pulled the mask down to eat cookies on the flight. While waiting for an Uber, a passerby also saw him. “He kept saying, ‘You’re His, I said, ‘No, I’m not,’ and got in the car.

To hear Welch tell it, she never wanted this notoriety, but she’s excited to do something definitive with it. “Maybe it was God’s gift to me or something,” she says. “Whatever is going to come from this is going to be something good.”

That’s the first thing you notice about the young woman born Hailey Elaine Welch – “There’s always been a ‘lie’ in Hailey,” she quips, handing me her initial certificate, which she’s wearing instead of a passport. Is – she is so small. Welch is polite – like, really polite. At 5’3″ tall, she says she looked like “chopsticks” when she stood next to Shaquille O’Neal for a latest photo, and her small body was one of her biggest fears. One became: being kidnapped.

“I’m paranoid about it,” she says. “If I’m in a big crowd, I’m looking around to see who is around me. You have to live like this these days, otherwise they’ll pick you up, throw you in a van and you’ll be gone.”

Since becoming famous, Welch has taken on darker roles. Nowadays, he is accompanied by three team members (a manager, a publicist and a videographer), including his best friend Bradford, who was with him when he first released “Hawk Tuh”. , About to quit his job at a factory that manufactured springs worn to dispense bags of chips into vending machines, he hired a lawyer on the advice of another friend’s mother. She then joined Control Corporate Penthouse (they adhered to the motto “Protect the Hawks from the Vultures”) and a similar high-powered exposure company, which represented Bruce Springsteen for several years. Have done. (When I tell this to Welch, she stops eating to ask, “Who’s that?” But when she learns that her publicist also represents country singer Justin Moore, her fame soars.) She goes.)

It has been difficult for Welch to explain how she wanted to mold her reputation into a profession. When pressed, she says she likes podcasting and has a vague idea of ​​doing something in comedy, but hasn’t gotten much further than that. “I can see it going that way,” she says. According to Welch’s publicist, the company Backup Farmland signed directly to Welch’s various interviews and look requests in order to decide “she And what would best support her story – and what she wants to do with comedy and philanthropy in the future.”

“I wanted to do something that really mattered and made a difference,” says Welch. “This is what the world needs.”

Nowadays it means helping animals. After breakfast, she and Bradford are going to PetSmart to do some shopping to donate to the local pound. Welch is a staunch puppy lover and, in Belfast, where last weekend she was tending a huge box of kale, carrots and potatoes, she has a miniature heeler named Ellie and a horse named Remy Jane, but she Moves in sunlight. Of cats. “They always get run over – or crushed,” she sighs.

Welch knows her approach to punchlines and, over breakfast, drops humorous, down-to-earth comments with the same relief and style as she did on the year’s most famous blowjob shaggy dog ​​story.

“I think the world needs to laugh,” Bradford said when asked to explain his friend’s attraction. “Haley was able to make everyone stop and laugh together.”

When Welch begins sharing bits and pieces of her backstory, it hints at why she leans on humor. Welch was raised by her grandmother from the age of nine months, and still lives with her today. She sees her father, a farmer, often, but says she has poor communication with her mother. “I never had anything to do with him,” says Welch.

She has a tattoo of the winter season on her right ribs that reads, “Still I Rise.” “After all the shit I’ve been through? Still I get up,” she says.

Welch had deleted her social media six months ago – long before her online popularity – for “personal reasons like mental health,” she says, but reinstated them next to the viral clips, partly on impersonator accounts. To rein in. “I guess so, are you bullshitting me?” she shouts. “These people are making money off of me and they’re not even me!”

However, Welch also keeps his share of the loot. According to reports, she has offered at least $65,000 worth of legitimate business and could make more than $30,000 for an appearance on Long Island this weekend. (His supervisor, Johnny Forster, declined to say how many instructions a Welch follows, but figures in the business “it’s enough to pay for horse food and dog food for the rest of his life.”) .”)

And the impersonators are the best part of this fight. He also faced various vitriol online and recently – on Shak’s advice – avoided reading comments, some of which were slanted political. One consumer called him “Trumptard.” “I don’t even know what that means,” she says.

Through no fault of his own, Welch found himself in the political crosshairs after participating in Briana LaPaglia’s good-natured game of hot-or-not. plan bri podcast. Morgan Wallen was considered a valuable “hawk”, but former President Donald Trump, the party’s 78, no longer was. Some saw this as Welch speaking out in opposition to the presidential candidate.

“I don’t want to be in the middle of it. Whoever you want to make president, it is your business. What is my opinion about you?” Welch says. “And I was talking about appearances. Donald Trump, I’m sure you’re a good man, but you don’t understand falcon Me. He is old enough to be my grandfather.”

The truth is that many families no longer choose to listen to Welch’s catchphrases. When she exchanged it on the Zach Bryan Show, she claims she hasn’t said it once in a year while watching a bikini contest in Castle Lauderdale and prefers to keep the two words like vest so they don’t Their spark is lost – although some days she wishes she had never told them.

“I don’t like the attention on myself, and now it’s all on me,” she says. “I’m not going to be able to move up at Walmart unless someone is as advanced as me and I’m like, ‘Can you do that? Are?’

“They all think they know a lot about me,” she adds, “but nobody knows anything about me.”

“Do you want them?” i ask.

Welch flashes a wry smile. “Don’t worry. They’ll do it before it’s over.”