With her headline-making podcast rumoured to be nearing its end, the internet’s favourite agent of chaos sits down with Wonderland to talk evolution, digital footprints, and the power of friendship.

Running the risk of making a hasty generalisation: if you consider yourself chronically online, chances are you’ve heard the name Tana Mongeau before. For the past ten years, the now 27-year-old (happy birthday, Tana!) has masterfully infiltrated our digital consciousness, spinning the trials and tribulations of her life into content gold — whether by sharing her every move with the millions of followers she’s gathered (first on YouTube, now across a sprawling web of platforms), or via her wildly successful podcast Cancelled, with friend and co-host Brooke Schofield.

Born and raised in Las Vegas, sin city handed young Mongeau the perfect storm of deliciously chaotic material — partying, drugs, underage drinking plots and all — allowing her to sharpen her knack for storytelling. And, as all stars eventually do, she made her way to Los Angeles, slipping into the lifestyle of an up-and-coming It girl stereotype: music releases, her own perfume, a line of canned wines… a pickle collaboration? All par for the course.

Some of it was a hit. Some of it wasn’t. But year after year, she’s held onto one thing: our attention. Cementing ‘Tana’ as one of the most indisputable names in social media — not just in the U.S., but increasingly, across the globe.

Now, with whispers that Cancelled may be coming to a close later this year, Wonderland catches up with the internet star at the tail end of the European leg of her Cancelled: International Disaster podcast tour — and what may well have been the show’s last definite stop on the continent — to talk girlhood, frontal lobe developments, and what’s glimmering on the horizon.

There’s something very special about getting comfortable on a sofa talking to your girlfriends. What importance did moments like these have in your life and why did you decide to start documenting them?
Well, I think that Brooke and Cancelled specifically have highlighted the importance of girlhood to me in so many ways that – I don’t necessarily know if I felt as strongly before we started the Podcast. I always say that the Podcast feels like a debrief, you know, the morning after a party, with all your friends, and you guys are all on the bed. And that’s kind of how Cancelled started. It was our debrief session. And Brooke introduced me to the show Sex and the City just a couple years ago, in a casual conversation, and my biggest takeaway from that show was: as women, the relationships that we have with the girls in our lives, those conversations and debriefs, that’s the shit that keeps us alive and going. And I’m just so grateful for it. All the girlhood, especially at our shows, just seeing it – it makes me so happy. It is the shit I live for [laughs].

You’ve done videos with your friends before, but when did it click – like, the idea that these long conversations should actually be documented, turned into a podcast?
I think I always thought I had a podcast, to be honest with you. It just used to come in the forms of like 45 minute YouTube videos. But I mean, I couldn’t shut the fuck up if my life depended on it [laughs], so it is really fun to have this welcoming space for that. I think I was probably 17 or 18 begging for a podcast, and I’m very happy that we waited until the time was right and the space had evolved. Honestly, thank God all of those years I didn’t have one [laughs]. It ended up just working out perfectly.

The theme of this tour is: how far you’ve both come. You often say that there are some blurs in your memory about your past and now that you’re writing your book, I was wondering if you could talk to me a bit about the experience of having so much of your life somehow immortalised on the Internet?
It’s really crazy. I mean, for so long I wouldn’t even go back and watch those old YouTube videos because they would just cringe me out. And recently, I just have so much love for that girl, and my younger self. I want to go back and give her so much grace – I know she was doing her best. So to me now, it’s so cool! Especially with my memory, being like… I recorded all of this.

It’s funny, I’m writing a specific story, in my book right now, about me wearing eyeshadow to school for the first time and how it all shaped who I was as a person [laughs], and how I was inspired by seeing Avril Lavigne on SNL, and just all this different stuff – but I was wanting a refresher on how I felt, and I have a storytime about some of the moments of those stories. So I’m going back to watch my 17 year old self talk about this moment that happened in 5th grade, and now seeing it all with such clear eyes and writing it in the book, it’s so cool. I feel like my digital footprint is helping me write this book, which is awesome.

I remember so vividly the full series of How To Cake Your Face Like a Pro, the intentionally wrong bra size, pink bronzer blush, and Palmer’s coconut oil for dry skin…
It’s wild too looking back at those old makeup tutorials and stuff, because now kids have so much access. We might have, maybe, had MySpace at that time, Google Image Search or whatever. But there were no Drunk Elephant makeup tutorials. The things that we would do – and like the Internet wasn’t there to humble us either and tell us to ‘wear your bra size’ [laughs] you know? We had to figure it all out, so it’s just funny to look back on them.

Do you think having all those eyes on you from such a young age contributed to shaping your relationship with yourself, your body and appearance?
It’s a combination of all of the things, right? I think that I have a very interesting type of “job” that I love so much, but it does come with hundreds of thousands of people nitpicking your appearance, and your voice, and your laugh, and your cadence, and your thought process, and what you wear, and how you wear it, and how you look. And I definitely think: had I gone down a different life path, I wouldn’t care so much about when I’m getting my next lip flip, right? Like a lot of it does have to do with being on camera and knowing people are going to scrutinize; and I’ve definitely just struggled with all of it.

I think I was a Facetune fiend (laughs) for so long. It’s like: ‘girl, you’re warping that wall’ – no one believes you, you’re acting so dysmorphic. And I’ve tried to just give myself more grace. I think that as I’m writing this book, as well, I think a lot about my 5-6 year old self – I’m thinking a lot about me because I’m having to go back and remember life the way I saw it at this age, and how I was. And I think that if my 5 year old self saw me today, she would think that I am so beautiful and accomplished… and she’d be so proud that, you know, I made it out – so much more than the size of my bottom lip.

I think falling in love with someone too, who I don’t feel like is with me for the vanity also just showed me that that’s out there, and just so many different things.

It’s a work in progress every day. I feel like we live in a society where everyone’s on their 13th facelift, whether the whole world knows that or not – or whatever it is, you know, and it’s hard. Comparison is just the root of all evil, and we know that and we still do it. It’s hard, but… it’s about giving yourself as much grace as you can, which is: you fall and you get up, and you try your best.

Thinking about your career, but particularly the Cancelled Podcast, what importance do you place on making mistakes openly and in your case quite publicly?
I think I was sharing so much of everything else, that you can’t just not share those things. And they ended up happening so publicly. And I’m sure there are a few mistakes or things I made that I probably would have lived for being a little more private [laughs] in that moment and going through it, but… With everything else being so public, it was never going to happen that way.

I think that the story would be very inauthentic if it just left out my mistakes, because I wouldn’t tell the full story. I’ve wanted to showcase my growth all along, even in moments where I still had so much growing to do. I had faith in myself and I think it’s important to also… be that – show all of the girls out there who feel like they’re like fuck-ups… I feel like so many people present this perfect life and image – and everything – online. And it’s like, it’s so untrue. We’re all human, we make so many mistakes, we grow – especially girls like me, who are maybe not dealt the best cards in their formative years, that there’s still time to become the person that you were always meant to be, and just not to feel like it’s chopped for you and that you’re so far behind. I don’t know – if my mistakes can serve as a message to anybody, I appreciate them all so much for that, because we can all wake up tomorrow and decide to be a completely different person if we want to be, and it’s never too late.

Almost 10 years ago, when you were still in your room in front of the famous “dirty old door”, you made a video entitled Something Everyone Should Hear. Nowadays, what is the message that you think your “girls, gays and theys” need to hear?
I love my ‘girls, gays and theys’ so much. Oh my God. The message I think they should hear – I’ve been kind of saying it a lot in this interview… And, I feel like: my frontal lobe developed, right? Mid twenties. It felt like a light switch. ​​I felt like I really started to get my life together, and be more critical of where I wanted my future to be, and who I wanted to be as a person. And, you know, I wanted to be happy with who I was when I went to sleep. But I also think that a lot of what our early twenties are, especially in today’s society, is about making mistakes and learning. And again, especially with the way the world is, we beat ourselves up so much and we compare ourselves to other people and we hate that thing we wore, and we hate that person we dated. And why would we say that in the middle of a conversation? And why would we do this, and this, and this? And we should be… have a perfect skincare routine, and a perfect diet, and all these things, right? There’s so much to keep up with. There’s this unattainable perfection that we’re all constantly chasing. And I think in reality, your twenties are about giving yourself just grace and doing whatever the fuck you want to do and learning – just learning and knowing that it’s all a part of the bigger picture. If I could go back in time, I would just tell myself ‘give yourself a little more grace here. It’s not as bad as you think’. And I think that’s what I want everyone to know: your flaws and your mistakes, all of those things, they make you, you; and they’re part of your story, and they’re just as important as the good things.

Finally, you recently recreated one of the pictures taken during your first time touring in Europe.
Yes [laughs]!

As this leg of the Cancelled: International Disaster is coming to an end, when can we expect a future visit; as well as, what can we expect from it?
I will be back as soon as I am wanted [laughs], like I’m there anytime. Are you kidding me? Ireland, especially, was so amazing. The UK. Glasgow was phenomenal! Like, the crowds – it is so wild to see love like this so fucking far from home, and I am so grateful.

Even today, I was looking around on this boat, everyone from the Tour was on it, we were all together, and I was just looking at Brooke and like: ‘Damn, we’re really going to be 50 years old – probably with entirely different faces, talking just about how crazy this time of our life was’ You know? Like, holy shit, it’s wild. And I’m so fucking grateful! It’s crazy.

Words – Sofia Batista

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