Lia Marie Johnson

Johnson was born on November 23, 1996 in Wahiawa, a census-designated place in Honolulu County, Hawaii, USA. According to her mother, she was born in the middle of a pineapple field. Her father worked for the US government. When she was only four months old, her family relocated to Florida. They were there for a year before the family moved again, and this time to California, where her sister, Katherine, was born. The sisters moved to Virginia with their mother when she and their father separated. Her mother remarried, and now Johnson has two half-sisters, Emma, Sammie, and Lexy, and a half-brother, Tyler. She and her family reside in San Diego, although she spends most of her time in Los Angeles. She dated YouTuber and actor JC Caylen from 2014 to 2016. Recent rumours have linked her to musician and social influencer Dillon Rupp.

Lia Marie Johnson loved acting from a young age. She portrayed Dorothy and Peter Pan in school plays, and took part in every talent show that her parents could get her to. After moving to San Diego, California, Johnson’s mother set up a YouTube channel for her on December 17, 2007. The initial videos were about her performances in the talent shows and church recitals. Between 2008 and 2010, she was part of several short projects and TV shows. Besides portraying Piper Palin in the short video ‘The Palin Family’, she worked on shorts like ‘No Man’s Land’, ‘Collide’, ‘Shattered Allegiance’, ‘I Do and I Don’t’, and ‘Sidewalk Symphony’, and on TV shows such as ‘Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!’ and ‘The Unit’.

In 2010, she was hired by Fine Brothers for their new project, ‘Kids React’. She made her first appearance on ‘FBE’ (Fine Brothers Entertainment) on October 16, 2010, reacting to the viral videos ‘Double Rainbow’, ‘Obama Fail’, ‘Twin Rabbits’, and ‘Snickers Halloween’. Within a year the channel accumulated more than a million subscribers, and with it rose Johnson’s popularity, and the work she did for her own channel received wider recognition. On August 25, 2011, the brothers and Johnson announced another project titled ‘Teens React’. She was arguably the most prominent star among the first group of teenagers who appeared on the series, and it played a pivotal role in launching her career. In April 2012, the brothers created a web show called ‘My Music’, in which Johnson played the recurring role of Rayna. She also became a regular on ‘YouTubers React’ series in 2014. She has collaborated with fellow YouTubers Shane Dawson and Brittani Louise Taylor.

She portrayed various characters in multiple sketches on ‘AwesomenessTV’. The YouTube show was produced by Nickelodeon, and the channel itself is a joint-venture between ‘DreamWorks Animations’ and ‘Verizon Hearst Media Partners’. It brought her immense mainstream exposure. When Nickelodeon made the TV movie ‘Terry the Tomboy’, Johnson starred as the eponymous character, who she had been playing on the show. Another one of her projects with ‘AwesomenessTV’ is ‘T@gged’, a story about three high school girls whose social media profiles are tagged in violent videos. The show has aired 2 seasons till date and has been renewed for a third.

In 2016, she took a seven month break from YouTube. When she returned, she explained that it was for a music album on which she had been working for last two years. Her first single under ‘Capitol Records’, ‘DNA’ (a haunting account of the abuse her mother had suffered at the hands of her father), was released that year. She released another single, ‘Cold Heart Killer’, in 2017.

1) Johnson has described herself as a Democrat. In 2016, she interviewed the then US president Barack Obama.

2) She was nominated for a Woodie Award in the social climber category in 2015.

3) She has been on the covers of ‘BYou’ and ‘Adweek’ magazines.