Rebecca Black walks down the hallway of a Los Angeles TV studio, a small entourage trailing her leopard-print stiletto heels, when suddenly the sound of Friday — the song that turned this Orange County, Calif., teen into the Internet sensation of 2011 — drifts through the open door of the studio control room.
Black seems not to notice, her mind on the interview ahead with the KTLA Morning News team on Thursday. And on some level, why would she? She’s certainly heard her song and seen her video countless times in the year since she recorded it as something of an expensive lark, a project she figured only her family and friends would likely ever see.
But beyond that, it also must feel like Friday happened in some other lifetime, given the whirlwind that swept her out of middle-school obscurity to worldwide fame — or infamy, depending on your point of view — since the video went viral in March and exploded into the love-it-or-hate-it song of the year.
How much has happened in the nine months since then? A few highlights: Black co-starred in Katy Perry’s video for Last Friday Night and later popped up on stage with Perry to sing Friday with her at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles. She appeared as a presenter at the Teen Choice Awards — and won the Choice Award as Web Star of the year — and also popped up at the MTV Video Music Awards. She released two more singles and videos, “My Moment” and “Person Of Interest.” Lady Gaga tweeted words of support. She posed for a photograph in the No H8 campaign.
Then Black won the online equivalent of a pair of Oscars, when “Rebecca Black” placed No. 1 on the Google Zeitgeist, the list of the fastest rising searches of the year, and Friday being named the most-watched YouTube video of the 2011.
“They’re definitely great lists to be on,” Black says. “I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet that this little kid from Orange County is on the top of Google Zeitgeist and YouTube.”
Those year-end honours brought a new rush of requests for interviews, so last Thursday we caught up with Black in Los Angeles, as she set out for interviews with KTLA, E! and Hollywoodlife.com, to watch how she handles the media spotlight and catch up with her about all that she experienced in the nine months after she burst onto the pop culture landscape,
“It doesn’t feel real at all,” she says as she starts to talk about how life has changed. “I try to think, ‘Why haven’t I freaked out over some of the things that have happened?’ “
On the set at KTLA, Black looks comfortable. She’s done interviews with reporter Sam Rubin before, but she says she seldom gets nervous anymore in the public eye. “I assume you got paid?” Rubin asks her at one point. “Yeah, yeah, I got paid,” Black tells him, smiling. “But a lot of the money goes to pay for things.”
When we met Black in March, it was just days after Friday had gone viral and she had just gotten home from school when we arrived at her house for the first interview she’d ever done with anyone. At the time, she and family seemed almost in shock over all the YouTube views for Friday, which at the time had only — “only” — 13 million of the nearly 200 million it would eventually reach.
She talked about sticking to her normal routines, school and friends and trips to the mall, while also seeing where all this attention might lead, but in the weeks that followed, the bright glare of her new-found fame overran any semblance of normalcy. Soon, demands for her time outside of school — interviews with everyone from Ryan Seacrest to Jay Leno and that offer to work in Katy Perry’s video — as well as continued verbal abuse from other kids prompted her to leave her school for studies at home.
“There was one morning when I woke up and said, ‘Mom, we have to try it, because it’s really hard,’” says Black of home schooling, which she’s continued for her ninth-grade studies this year. “You can try to make up tests but you can only miss so many lessons.”
As for bullying by other kids, which was reported earlier this year as the cause for her leaving school, that was more of a secondary reason, she says. “I’d not ever really been picked on until the Friday thing started,” Black says. “They would chat me on Facebook and say, ‘Your song sucks,’ or ‘People only buy your song because it sucks.’
“Being a teenage girl, words hurt.”It was weird, she says, not going to school every day and not being around her friends and other kids at first. And she says she lost her best friend during that time, too. “When she told me that I don’t care about our friendship, I got mad,” Black says.
At the same time, she and her parents, Dr. Georgina Marquez and Dr. John Black, were trying to figure out how to take her fame and see what kind of career it might led to. “I don’t have parents who are specialists in the (entertainment) industry,” Black says. “They are veterinarians who are used to set salaries and set hours. “So it was kind of overwhelming.”
Across town at the offices of the E! network, Black tapes a comic bit to air during red carpet coverage of the Golden Globes next month, and then sits for an interview with E! News reporter Kristina Guerrero, who asks her why she thinks Friday took off the way it did. “I think (because) it’s an anthem,” Black says. “And it’s one of those things where you either loved it or hated it. So you would tell your friends to watch the video to see what they think.”
It’s a lot to take in, Black says, as she ticks off the many wonderful experiences she’s had over the last nine months. “The best fun time I had was the (Katy Perry) Last Friday Night video,” she says. “The best things I could check off my bucket list were going to the VMAs and the TCAs, and winning a Teen Choice Award.”
Beyond the awards shows and video shoots and movie premieres, on a more personal level she says she feels like a different person in some ways. “I’ve become a lot more mature,” Black says. “A lot of people will tell me about little things that I used to think were big problems, and now I think it will all be OK, it’s not a big deal.
“My mom says I’ve become nicer,” she adds, laughing. “And I think I agree with her. When you’re in middle school you have all the girl drama. I would have my teenage days, when I would get a little bit mean, just from hanging around with other kids all day.”Her parents say they’ve been impressed with the maturity and hard work she’s shown this year, too.
“Overall it’s been a wonderful, positive experience,” Marquez says. “It has definitely exposed her to so many different situations that she wouldn’t be exposed to until she was a lot older or maybe even never.”
“I hope she doesn’t lose out on her childhood, so to speak,” Black says. “You’ve seen the maturity, but she’s still a 14-year-old. It’s great knowing that she’s enjoyed it,” he says. “She’s had to deal with all the negativity that’s come with it, and I’m amazed that she’s been able to handle it with such class.”
In a conference room at her business manager’s office in West Hollywood, Black sits down for an interview with Kirstin Benson of Hollywoodlife.com, who asks at one point whether she’d go back and change anything about the Friday video if she could. “I did the video thinking no one but my family and friends would see it,” Black says. “One part of me says maybe I’d make some changes, but another part of me says, Friday is what got me here, so no, I wouldn’t change a thing.’”
At the start of each month, Black sits down with her manager, Debra Baum of DB Entertainment, and her parents to talk over what they’ll be working on for the month to come, a conversation which she — as the 14-year-old CEO and president of RB Friday Inc. — has a considerable amount of input in.
In 2012, the focus is going to be on live performances to some degree, she and Baum say, though there are other projects coming or in talks as well. In the spring, she’ll star as one of the lead voice actors in the English-language version of Bunny Fu, which reportedly is the most successful Chinese animated movie ever. Baum says there are also talks about doing a feature film based on Black’s unlikely Cinderella story of success.
A few months from now, a fourth single and video will be released. Given that she’s a YouTube-born star, the plan is to continue with the single-and-video model and hold off on releasing an album for now.
She’s recorded a new version of Friday, too, one she says is truer to the artist she hopes to one day be, and that will eventually be released too. “Friday is a big part of me now,” Black says. “I think that’s what 99.9 per cent of the people who know me know me from. When we re-recorded it, I didn’t want it to sound like it sounds, like it’s bubble gum pop.
“I wanted it to sound like we’re on the beach, someone has a guitar, someone has a drum, and so we did. And I love it — it’s so good!”