Last May, Bobbi Althoff paid $300 to change her life forever.
As a parody account on TikTok, Bobbi Althoff knew her dream of making the transition to a celebrity interviewer was missing one key component: celebrities. So she put out a request to her followers: she would give $300 to whoever could connect her to a famous person willing to be on her comedy podcast. One lucky follower got her comedian Rick Glassman, who came on the show to chat about the exact amount of money in his bank account. Another viewer led her to Funny Marco, where she deflected questions about her body count and queried the internet comedian about his rap dreams. In these interviews, her audience got their first glimpse of Althoff’s schtick: a deadpan, absurdist antagonism, part Zack Galifianakis in Between Two Ferns, part cringe Gen-Z interrogation. Her next podcast guest didn’t even require a finder’s fee. Instead, she wrote a simple DM to five-time Grammy-winning, multi-platinum artist (and notoriously elusive) rapper Drake. Three days later, they were filming a podcast episode in Drake’s bed.
“The rise was rapid and a lot to take in. Everything happened so quickly,” Althoff, 26, tells Rolling Stone in an exclusive interview. “But I always knew that I wanted to interview celebrities. That was kind of the big goal.” But Althoff did more than book a high-profile celeb. In less than three months, she went from a podcaster willing to throw around cash for guests to a well-known interviewer with a social media following 11 million people deep, with access to some of the biggest names in entertainment — like Shaq, Mark Cuban, Jessica Alba, Charlie Puth, Jason Derulo, and Offset. But with that popularity came a rigorous debate online, one that turned clips of The Really Good Podcast viral — and Althoff into an internet villain. Now, almost six months since the controversies about Althoff reached a fever pitch, the podcaster tells Rolling Stone she’s not just back with a new season of her show. She’s back with a new attitude toward the limelight.
Less than a week away from the release of The Really Good Podcast‘s second season, Althoff is zooming from outside her California home, sitting in her car which she jokingly refers to as her office. But she is — as even internet celebrities find themselves — a mom first, so she’s quick to mention that if she ducks out of frame, it’s to keep her young daughter from seeing her and presumably wanting to join in. (She has two daughters, ages one and three.) “My children are mommy magnets,” Althoff explains. “If they could crawl back into my womb they both would go.”
Parenting isn’t just the job she finds the hardest and most rewarding, it’s also what kickstarted Althoff’s internet fame. In 2021, Althoff was already a TikTok staple for her “bad mom” parody account, racking up a million followers with her send-ups of every insult strangers have ever lobbed at moms online. She gave her children the pseudonyms “Richard” and “Concrete,” and pretended to be a mother completely focused on her TikTok influencing career, sharing stories about spending outrageously on her husband’s credit card, refusing to let her children have toys that didn’t match her aesthetic, and in one genuine post, joking about how breastfeeding made her breasts entirely lopsided.
Her audience, made up of devoted fans familiar with Althoff’s deadpan comedy, followed her to her podcast, and she started gaining others, too — which encouraged other celebs and artists to appear on Althoff’s show. Following the Drake interview, she booked bigger and bigger guests and even planned a tentative comedy tour. But as Althoff’s star power grew, so did the critiques. Where did Althoff’s access come from? Was she an industry plant, or a white woman succeeding on a tired shtick? By last August, Althoff was the topic of thousands of tweets and articles in The Hollywood Reporter, Vox, and Buzzfeed. She was criticized for taking up interview opportunities Black hip-hop journalists could have done better. People called her rude, untalented, unfunny, and accused her of being a nepo baby or worse, simply another influencer wasting everyone’s time. The opinions were everywhere — and Althoff read almost every single one. And then she had to log off.
“I think a lot of people didn’t get that it was a bit, and I still think people don’t,” Althoff says. “It’s definitely hard having so many people have so many opinions about everything you do. I think a lot of people think I’m just this mean person who says mean things to people. That’s why I’m trying to make sure people know there’s a difference between the interviewer me, versus the real me.”
For Althoff, regardless of how she comes across in clips that circulate online, that distinction isn’t just important — it’s the driving force behind her podcast. As a (previously) full-time stay-at-home mom, Althoff created her podcasting persona as a means to combat the unhealthy way she was isolating herself at home, focusing on her kids to the detriment of her own emotional well-being. She describes the persona viewers see interviewing their favorite celebs as an amalgamation of her biggest insecurities, just without shame. “Podcast Bobbi owns her discomfort,” Althoff explains. “She says what she thinks and she doesn’t care about what people think about her. She leans into the things that people think are stupid about her. With guests, we see what happens. So if the guest is throwing punches, I can throw punches back. If they are super sweet and mellow, then it’s like, I then feed off that energy. It’s like improv.”
Davis Bates*
While she braved the worst of it, Althoff says that her 15 minutes of fame also led to some mistakes. For instance, she went with a friend to get a round of filler in her face, a change she immediately regretted. “I got L.A.-ified. It was awful,” Althoff says, laughing. “I went to a [med spa] with my friend. We look in the mirror at ourselves too much. [The worker] was like, ‘Yeah, you could definitely use a little bit of this, a little bit of that.’ And we walked out of there looking like clowns.” The injections have already been dissolved and Althoff, who filmed at least one episode of season 2 with healing bruises, can laugh at the incident now. But it also makes her grateful for the aspects of her life that she kept private before the fame. In 2021, Althoff made the decision to stop sharing her children’s faces online for safety, a choice she’s only more confident in since the viral debate surrounding her podcast.
“With kids, you’re literally wearing your heart outside of your body. And then you combine that with social media and you’re just a mess. It’s definitely hard having so many people have so many opinions about everything you do,” Althoff tells Rolling Stone. “My mental health did struggle a lot in the last few months, but I feel like I’m at a good place right now. I got put on an anxiety medication and that single-handedly changed my life. I have never felt better and I think that’s why taking such a break between creating a new season was so helpful for me.”
Wednesday marks The Really Good Podcast‘s first episode back, and will kick off a season she says is filled with exciting new activities, even more excruciating conversations, and guests like Bobby Flay, Rainn Wilson, and Andrew Santino. And Althoff tells Rolling Stone that even as she’s determined to make the most of her spotlight, she is more than fine if people aren’t as interested in the debate this time around.
“I am very lucky and fortunate that things happened the way that they did. But I’ve learned [that] my 15 minutes of virality… that’s not sustainable. So with my podcast, at least I know that it’s something I have fun with, it has fans, and I know that the guests have so much fun doing it,” Althoff says. “I couldn’t do this without the people in my life. Because none of that [online] matters. What’s in my house is what matters.”
