Lauren Huff is a writer at Entertainment Weekly with over a decade of experience covering all facets of the entertainment industry. After graduating with honors from the University of Texas at Austin (Hook 'em, Horns!), Lauren wrote about film, television, awards season, music, and more for the likes of The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline Hollywood, Us Weekly, Awards Circuit, and others before landing at EW in May 2019.
When JoJo Siwa made the decision to drink alcohol on stage during her recent Pride Fest performances, she had a unique early supporter: her grandma.
On the July 8 episode of her podcast, JoJo Siwa Now, the 21-year-old singer and dancer revealed the origin story to the bit, which she says is one of her "favorite f---ing parts" of her performances.
"This idea of doing this stemmed from, I was in rehearsals and we were starting a new routine [for] 'Yesterday's Tomorrow's Today,' and my 21st birthday had just passed," Siwa explained. "I was like, 'I wanna f---ing take a shot before this.' And my grandma was like, 'All right, JoJo. You should do it.' And I was like, all right. Let's do it!"
Siwa is coming off a slew of Pride Fest performances in L.A., London, New York, Miami, and Chicago. The performer said on her podcast that the drinking ritual made the audience go "absolutely ballistic," and especially became a "big thing" during her set at Los Angeles Pride at the Park.
"I brought out a jug of Tito's, and people were like, 'Woah. What are you doing? Is it real? Is it fake?'" she said of the onstage moment. "And I was like, 'Bitch, it is what it f---ing is. It's a bottle of Tito's.'"
The Pride performances -- and jug of Tito's -- come as Siwa is gearing up to release her debut EP, Guilty Pleasure, on Friday, July 12. The last few months pre-release have seen the former child star rebrand her colorful kid-friendly look into a more adult-oriented persona and sound, which coincided with the April release of her pop single "Karma."
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Siwa recently made headlines when she said that she wanted to "invent" a subgenre of pop music for the LGBTQ+ community with her upcoming EP. She later walked back those comments in an interview with TMZ.
"I definitely am not the inventor of gay pop, for sure not," Siwa said. "But I do want to be a piece in making it bigger than it already is. I want to bring more attention to it."
"I'm not the creator," she added. "I'm not the president, but I might be like the CEO, or CMO, chief marketing officer. I'm the CMO."
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