Brianna LaPaglia Won’t Let The Internet Be Her Narrator

Brianna LaPaglia is in her Reputation era. The podcaster and content creator tells me she’s been stocking up on snake jewelry recently and scribbles the phrase down on a Post-it note in the Elite Daily offices after her photo shoot. (You’ll see her doodles throughout this story.) On another scrap, she writes down “Be a decent human” — a motto she’s emblazoned on her own merch, and one she thinks more of the chronically online could take to heart. “We just feel like we can say whatever or do whatever, but that’s no way you would treat people in real life,” she explains.

Compared to her own chaotic internet presence, LaPaglia, 25, is much more low-key in person. She sips a cold-pressed juice from Oakberry, makes plenty of friendly eye contact, and tells me all about her upcoming ski vacation plans and how much she loves her dog, Boston. That’s not to say her social media persona is an act; it’s simply how she narrates her stories when she can’t see who’s on the other side. “I can’t really fathom it or grasp it, but when I meet people in real life, it feels like, ‘Holy sh*t! So many people follow me and I’m actually a public figure,’” she says. “But online, it still feels not real. I feel like it’s just my diary.”

In the last few months, it’s gotten a lot more real. She went through a contentious breakup with country star Zach Bryan, fell out with her best friend and PlanBri Uncut co-host Grace O’Malley — and watched it all play out online. But it hasn’t been all lows. She also covered a swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated, led the creative direction on a Boys Lie collab, and attended the Golden Globes in a form-fitting metallic dress that magazines hailed as the ultimate “revenge” dress. “When I have these big moments, I get so nervous, and I get so much imposter syndrome,” she says. “I put on a blinder, so I’m on autopilot cruising through. I kind of sink into myself and I’m like, ‘You have to pretend this isn’t real so that you can perform.’ Then five months later, sh*t will slap me in the face like, ‘Oh my gosh, you really did that.’”

It’s only now that LaPaglia is starting to feel the impact of her Nov. 8 BFFs episode, where she alleged that Bryan emotionally abused her — isolated her, controlled her, smashed her phone — and said she turned down a $12 million NDA from him. (Since his initial breakup announcement, Bryan has said little apart from asking people to leave his friends and family alone; representatives for Bryan have not responded to Elite Daily’s request for comment.) “I always trusted my intuition and my gut, and I did it for me,” LaPaglia says of speaking out. “It was a selfish moment where I was like, ‘I’m doing this for me, and I’m taking me back.’” What surprised her were the DMs from listeners — to this day, women reach out to tell her she inspired them to leave their toxic relationships. “That will always be one of the proudest moments in my life,” she says. “Still, I can’t look back at that episode — I can't even look at that girl — it's a sad time of my life.”

Her fame, for better or for worse, is more tangible than it’s ever been. “I always had this feeling I was meant to do something different and crazy,” LaPaglia says of her childhood in and around Boston. Her family had a hunch she’d be in entertainment — this was a girl whose favorite after-school activity was narrating stories to numerous pets, all of which she had at the same time: three guinea pigs, three cats, two hamsters, a lizard, a snake, and a dog. Still, at 17, her family piled into a van and dropped her off at college in Ohio, where LaPaglia thought she’d go pre-med. “When they were leaving me, you would’ve thought I died. They were sobbing, and they were like, ‘Bri, we’re never going to see you again,’” she says. “I didn’t know that I was going to be anything. They always knew.”

While in school, she began collecting eyeballs on TikTok as the always-hungover college girl — hanging out of car windows, sipping Blue Raspberry Coolattas (or “lazberry coradas” during a particularly rough morning-after) and rambling about her day in a fast-paced, stream-of-consciousness flow. There was the time she hovered over a toilet, pausing mid-gag to lip-sync to Kendrick Lamar’s “Money Trees,” or, more recently, when she weighed in on New York City influencer drama after downing several energy drinks — leading to beef with one of the influencers involved. Whether or not you can actually relate, the chance to look behind the scenes at the whirlwind of her life — a place most creators wouldn’t dare to go — can feel irresistible.

In 2020, LaPaglia nabbed an internship at Barstool based on the popularity of her videos. She quickly turned that into a full-time job, moved to New York, and started hosting the company’s college party tours. By the end of 2021, she was co-hosting three of its star podcasts: her own PlanBri Uncut (with O’Malley), BFFs (with Josh Richards and Barstool founder Dave Portnoy), and Because We Got High (which only ran for a year). Portnoy, in particular, has been a close mentor. “He’s going to hate that I said this, but he’s like my dad,” LaPaglia says. “Sometimes he has a very hard head, and maybe we take different approaches to things, but I always like to get his input, because I think he’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met — I trust Dave with my life.”

I was really with someone who was my biggest hater, and I was their biggest fan.

Meanwhile, Josh Richards, now her remaining BFFs co-host after Portnoy stepped back from the podcast in 2024, has become like a sibling. “He picks on me like I’m his older sister,” she says. “He’s so annoying and gross — the little brother where it’s like he’s picking his boogers. But I love him.” She lights up discussing BFFs: “That’s our baby.” LaPaglia takes pride in the show’s evolution — and her own. “You can watch my progression,” she says. “Throughout the show, I gain confidence.”

The podcast has also become her outlet to address — and process — her breakup with Bryan (“I don’t want, in two years, to buy a f*cking house and think, ‘Oh, this is the money from the dude that literally f*cking destroyed me and broke me for a year’”) as well as the end of PlanBri and her friendship with O’Malley (“I ended the podcast in October because it was a forum to just bully me … it was months of me being like, ‘Grace, can you please just, like, defend me?’”). At times, she’s spoken up before she felt ready — whether due to swirling rumors or the other party releasing a statement first. “Sometimes I wish I didn’t have to share anything and that I could have just healed, and dealt with things privately,” she tells me. “But those weren’t the cards I was dealt.”

Still, she’s learned a lot from handling these situations publicly. “I reacted a lot to the noise when I went through a lot of it because I was so under the microscope and I was in defense mode,” she says. “It's taught me to sometimes shut up and go deal with it behind a closed door.”

A piece of that microscope is her Reddit snark page, r/briannachickenfrsnark — a relentless forum of more than 30,000 users who dissect, critique, and screenshot her every move. On a recent episode of BFFs (which they also film for YouTube), LaPaglia invited her harshest Reddit critics for an open dialogue. She had takers, but no one was willing to show their faces. “I know exactly the person they are, and it’s too mean for me to describe. So you know what? I think that says enough.”

Actually, she’s not done: “It’s sad,” she continues. “They clearly have nothing better to do, and this is their world, this is their hobby. Not everyone has good hobbies.”

While she sometimes feeds the trolls by reacting to their bogus claims on her Instagram story (“I just got another nose job and a boob job. I had no idea!”), she’s not trying to change minds. “It’s like, ‘You hate me? I guarantee I would’ve hated you first. We’re on the same page.’” The biggest misconception, she says, is that she’s the hateful one: “They think I have ulterior motives. If you met my friends or my family, and people that know me, you’d know all I want is for people to succeed and be happy.”

Lately, the gossip around her has centered on her dating life: Is she dating the guy she brought as a plus-one on an influencer trip? Is she still making out with West Wilson from Summer House? LaPaglia enjoys turning that speculation into entertainment, but in real life, she’s not ready to date. “I feel so emotionally unavailable, which is a little upsetting,” she says. “There have been some really great guys that I think would be amazing for me, but I’m emotionally f*cked up right now, where I can’t even fathom the idea of letting someone in.”

I have to remember it’s only been four months. I still have really bad days, and I still have PTSD.

When the time comes, she’ll know what she wants in a partner — for starters, someone who supports her job. “I was really with someone who was my biggest hater, and I was their biggest fan,” she says. “So I want it to be reciprocated.” She’d also prefer to date someone who isn’t in the spotlight. “I just want a normal person that can laugh with me, and someone that understands my life, but isn't in the same realm.” Maybe that next special someone won’t even be a guy. On a recent BFFs episode, LaPaglia — who has identified as bisexual in the past and said she’s “dabbled” in women — joked that she might be “fully a lesbian,” which she tells me led to an influx of DMs from women welcoming her to the club and asking her out. “There were actually some kind of famous women reaching out to me, and I was like, ‘What? I didn’t even know you were gay,’” LaPaglia says. “I feel like I’m late to the game, and it’s really intimidating. I’m 25, I’m going to go on my first date with a girl? Everyone in New York is a lesbian, so they’ve been doing it forever.”

For now, she’s focused on work — and that means plotting out a life after influencing. “I want to navigate out of being chronically online and the video diary-esque thing,” she says. “Not because I don’t like being online, but because I’ve always wanted to go into directing, writing, and being creative in a different way. And I think social media has been my path to get there.” She’s even talking to publishers about writing fiction, though it’ll be fiction starring herself because, as she puts it, “People are nosy. I get it. Give them what they want.”

When I ask what she’s working toward right now, I expect LaPaglia to mention a Super Bowl commercial or an A-list guest on BFFs (which she and Richards plan to take on the road as a live show). Instead, she highlights a different project: herself. “Everyone’s life kind of turns upside down at 25, whether it’s dramatic or not,” she says. “It’s really like that, ‘Holy shit, I’m really crossing the threshold of figuring out who I am.’ If you don’t focus on yourself, and reflect on who you want to be, then you can f*ck it all up.”

In addition to chatting out her breakup from behind a microphone, she’s still working through it in therapy. “I have to remember it’s only been four months. I still have really bad days, and I still have PTSD,” she says. “So, who knows how long it’ll take?” And she’s recently returned to vlogging: Revisiting her YouTube videos from when she first moved to NYC and lived in a tiny apartment reminds her of the wide-eyed, “giddy” 20-year-old who’d gladly sit in the back of a Spirit flight to Miami, fully embracing the adventure.

“I think I have a chip on my shoulder after this past year and having to keep proving myself to people. I want to remind myself that girl on YouTube never felt the need to prove herself or explain herself,” LaPaglia says. “I want to get back in touch with that Blue Raspberry Coolatta girl.”