Colleen Ballinger

Colleen Mae Ballinger ( BAL-in-jər; born November 21, 1986) is an American comedian, YouTuber, actress, singer and writer. She is best known for her creation and portrayal of the Internet character Miranda Sings, posting videos of the character on YouTube, performing her one-woman comedy act on tour in theatres worldwide, and creating and starring in a Netflix original series titled Haters Back Off (2016–2017). Ballinger created the comically talentless, egotistical and eccentric character to satirize the many YouTube videos featuring people singing badly in hopes of breaking into show business but who appear unaware of their lack of talent.

Ballinger also features comedy and lifestyle videos on her personal YouTube channel and a vlog channel, Colleen Vlogs. Her YouTube channels, combined, have surpassed 5 billion total views. The Miranda Sings channel has more than 10 million subscribers, and the character has more than 13 million TikTok followers and 6 million Instagram followers. In 2015, Ballinger won a Teen Choice Award for "Web Star: Comedy" and a Streamy Award as Best Actress.

Ballinger has appeared as an actress and singer in theatre, television, recordings and web series. She appeared in the web series Escape the Night (2018–2019), played Dawn in the Broadway musical Waitress (2019), and has appeared three times on The Tonight Show (2016–2017), among other talk shows. Ballinger has also published two best-selling books, written in Miranda's voice, Selp-Helf (2015) and My Diarrhe (2018).

In July 2023, after accusations against Ballinger of inappropriate conduct were widely reported in the press, she cancelled her forthcoming live shows, but she continues to vlog and host podcasts.

Early life

Ballinger was born and raised in Santa Barbara, California, the daughter of Tim Ballinger, a sales manager, and his wife Gwen (née Trent), a homemaker. Ballinger was homeschooled during middle school, attended San Marcos High School and graduated in 2008 from Azusa Pacific University, where she majored in vocal performance. She has two older brothers, Christopher and Trent, and a younger sister, Rachel.

Career

Acting career

From 2007 to 2009, Ballinger performed at Disneyland in California; gave private voice, movement coaching and piano lessons to children; and performed at parties and cabaret spaces. In 2009, she played Kelsi Nielsen in High School Musical at Candlelight Pavilion Dinner Theatre in Claremont, California. Ballinger appeared on the 2010 album More With Every Line, by songwriter Tim Prottey-Jones, and the 2011 album Self Taught, Still Learning by Chris Passey. In New York in 2011, she played Lynda Bird Johnson in a staged reading of First Kids and created the role of Circe in the American Theatre of Actors Off-Broadway production Odyssey – The Epic Musical.

In 2012, Ballinger was featured as nurse Royal in the web series Dr. Fubalous. She also gave a talk at the Boston Children's Theatre about how to use social media to promote yourself as a performer. In 2013, she starred in the episode "Under the Bed" in the web series The Flipside and as Amara in episode 9 of season 2 of the web series Hipsterhood. She plays Meg on the Volume 12 DVD of Family Guy in the live-action version of the show's introduction. Also in 2013, she was featured on the MTV True Life episode "I'm Famous Online". In 2014, she appeared in the episode "Wedding Plans!" on the web series MyMusic.

Ballinger was a guest co-host on The View in 2015. The same year, she was interviewed on the podcast RuPaul: What's the Tee?, starred in a Todrick Hall video, "Beauty and the Beat Boots", and appeared in the Season 2 finale of the Condé Nast Entertainment webseries #HeyUSA, with host Mamrie Hart. Later that year, both as herself and as Miranda Sings, Ballinger starred in a six-episode beauty series parody called How to Makeup on the I Love Makeup YouTube channel operated by Collective Digital Studio. In this show, "Colleen has fantastically found a way for guys to become interested in a makeup show ... there's a plot". Re/code featured Ballinger to exemplify "an emerging economy" of internet content providers. She is featured on the track "Clouds" in Flula Borg's 2015 EP, I Want to Touch You.

Ballinger appeared in a series of 2016 DiGiorno pizza commercials. In 2018, she appeared as The Disco Dancer in season 3 of the web series Escape the Night, in a cameo role in the animated film Ralph Breaks the Internet, and in the Ariana Grande music video "Thank U, Next". She appeared as The Duchess in season 4 of Escape the Night (2019). She made her Broadway debut in the musical Waitress, as Dawn, where she appeared from August to September 2019. The week of Ballinger's debut, box office grosses for the musical increased by $358,783 to $938,087, and they continued to rise, reaching $963,408 the following week. On Halloween 2020, Ballinger played Janet in a livestream reading of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, starring original cast members Tim Curry, Nell Campbell and Barry Bostwick.

In 2021, Ballinger voiced the role of Crandy on the Netflix animated series Centaurworld.

Comedy act and videos

In 2009, Ballinger began to make a living by performing her live one-woman comedy act in character as Miranda Sings. She continued to tour thereafter and stated that, of all her professional activities, she gets the most satisfaction in her career from her live performances. In addition to her Miranda tours, Ballinger toured with her then-husband, singer and fellow YouTuber Joshua David Evans, in music and comedy shows in December 2015 and January 2016 across the US as "The Colleen & Josh Show".

Ballinger displays more than 2,000 videos on her YouTube channels. Her personal channel features comedy, question and answer videos, YouTube challenges, and Ballinger discussing culture and current topics or vlogging her activities with her family, friends and YouTube colleagues. The channel is "highly recommended" by Emertainment Monthly. It has received more than 1.9 billion views and accumulated more than 8 million subscribers. Her Miranda Sings channel has surpassed 2.3 billion views and 10 million subscribers. A third channel, Colleen Vlogs, with more than 3 million subscribers and .9 billion views, chronicles some of her experiences at home and on tour. In 2014, Backstage magazine identified Ballinger as a performer who has "taken great advantage of producing their own content [online] and gathering large fan bases to promote their work". To promote her videos and shows, Ballinger is active on social media, with TikTok followings of more than 13 million for Miranda and 8 million for Ballinger, Instagram followings of more than 6 million for Miranda and 7 million for Ballinger, more than 2 million Twitter followers for Miranda and 1.5 million for Ballinger, and more than 1.5 million page likes on the Miranda Sings Facebook page. BuzzFeed called Miranda "The Queen of Twitter".

Ballinger was able to turn the popularity of her videos into income from a percentage of YouTube advertising fees or occasionally fixed sponsorship fees. Until March 2013, Ballinger's YouTube audience was modest, but in that month, her Miranda Sings channel's audience reached 150,000 subscribers, and both of her YouTube channels began to expand far more rapidly. Ballinger offers merchandise on her mirandasings.com website, and some of the videos contain brand endorsements. For example, a 2016 video, "Sexy Buttery Love Song", promoted Jack in the Box restaurants. In 2016, Forbes magazine ranked Ballinger as the ninth-highest-earning YouTuber.

Beginning in 2021, Ballinger and her husband, Erik Stocklin, streamed weekly podcasts titled Relax! with Colleen and Erik on Apple Podcasts and posted them to a YouTube channel with the same name.

Accusations of inappropriate conduct

In April 2020, 17-year-old fan and YouTuber Adam McIntyre accused Ballinger of "[enlisting] his unpaid help" for content he had suggested for her Miranda Sings social media accounts and of sending him lingerie when he was 13 years old. Ballinger responded that McIntyre had asked for the lingerie after it was offered in one of her livestreams as one of several joke gifts for fans; she said it had been poor judgment to send the underwear to him. She noted that she often uses comedy ideas suggested by fans but admitted that it had been a mistake to allow the young fan to post directly to her Twitter account for a day without carefully vetting the content that he posted. Ballinger also addressed criticism of some of her older videos satirizing Latina and overweight women, agreeing that they were insensitive and apologizing for having posted them. Afterwards, McIntyre continued to post videos criticizing Ballinger.