HARSH REALITY
I was desperate to go on Love Island but they ghosted me when I told them about my STI – now I’m glad, says GK Barry
Scroll down to read a full break-down of this year's I'm a Celebrity contestants
TIKTOK star GK Barry has been announced as one of the 12 celebrities for this year's series of I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!
The podcaster will join Colleen Rooney, Danny Jones, and Maura Higgins in taking on bushtucker trials in the jungle.
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GK, whose real name is Grace Keeling, appeared on the podcast to talk about her career.
Speaking to host Grace Beverley, she discussed her skyrocketing rise to fame during the pandemic and why she's glad she was rejected from Love Island.
GK also shared the double standards she has faced as a female comic online and why she thinks she'll inevitably be cancelled.
The 25-year-old shot to fame making story-time videos during the Covid lockdown and started her own podcast in 2022.
Read More On GK Barry
Ahead of her stint in the jungle, she has already sold out her live podcast tour, set to take place in February 2025.
Before she gained traction online, GK worked as a barista in Costa for three years while studying for her bachelor's degree.
However, she struggled to think of a "realistic" career she wanted to pursue, dreaming of being famous from a young age.
She joked about how she studied Miranda Hart in an effort to become funny in secondary school
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Describing herself as "ugly" and "buck-teethed," GK pointed out how her lack of popularity was "character-building."
"Everyone that I’ve met that is so incredible looking has got the personality of a Ryvita, there’s nothing to do them," she explained.
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While she joked that it took her until sixth form to gain any kind of popularity, her online presence grew much quicker.
She recalled how she went from 200,000 TikTok followers in December 2020 to reaching one million in April 2021.
"As soon as I hit one million followers, I was matching [my Costa wage] and then earning more," she said.
"I remember always thinking when I hit one million I can relax a bit because I think people take you more seriously.
"It was so anti-climatic, nothing changed really but career-wise that was when I thought ‘I can probably do this full-time.’"
Finding her stride with self-deprecating story-times, Grace was signed to a talent agency and revealed her biggest dream.
"Funnily enough, when I first joined my management they asked me what I wanted to do and, the cheek of me, I said: 'My end goal is Love Island,'" she recalled.
"I got a call for it, I was ready to give my life, I had the interview, told them I spoke about chlamydia online, they never got back to me.
";But it was a blessing because now I think ‘What was the goal there, Grace?’
"You’re always stained with the Love Island stain and I want to go on to do other stuff and sometimes you don’t have that opportunity because they say: 'That’s just a Love Islander.’
"I just want to be taken seriously so I’m glad that I didn’t do that."
GK has rubbed elbows with Love Island's most successful veteran, Molly-Mae, who she revealed was the first person to leave her starstruck.
"She came up to me and said she watched my videos and I thought I can die now," she said.
"I remember being shocked, that was the first person that made me go I am on the FYP."
Grace reflected on her early days as a TikToker, an unheard of career in the UK at the time.
"Nobody had a career off TikTok apart from Addison Rae and I was [thinking] 'Obviously this isn’t a thing unless you’re dancing and American,'" she said.
"So I was just doing this [thinking] at some point I’ll have to pull something out of my a** and get a proper job."
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However, she soon found her stride and even began making sponsored content, though she said the pay wasn't much to begin with.
"I had to sell these leggings because they make you’re a** look big," she said, recalling her first paid endorsement.
"I haven’t got an a** but I was said: ‘My a** is flat but it looks a tiny bit peachy in these,’ and sold them out.
"Then I just carried on doing s**tty ads, [I got paid] absolute p**s all because nobody worked with TikTokers.
"The money was so bad, I had just quit my job thinking I was going to do it full-time and I thought ‘Maybe I’ll go back.’"
She added that Instagram influencers were "fuming" over TikTokers "taking their brand deals."
And GK is all to aware that TikTok will inevitably follow suit in dipping in popularity.
"You’ve got to be self-aware, I know that TikTok won’t always be the app that it is now," she said.
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"In a year, it’s probably going to be irrelevant and you’ve just go to find another way to be relevant, you’ve got to be creative."
She said she is also waiting for the day where she will become the latest celebrity to get cancelled.
"I live in fear day and night [of being cancelled] but obviously I know that everyone has pretty much been cancelled or is going to cancelled, it’s just a thing," GK said.
"Even when you go through life, you can’t not upset someone at some point.
"Sometimes you’ll say something and not realise maybe what you’ve said and it’ll upset some people but maybe it’s just the way you deal with it.
"The thing is on social media, people do actually feel like they know you so I think they do feel more hurt when you’ve done something wrong."
However, she explained how GK Barry is actually "a very over the top version" of her personality.
"When people come up to you, you feel like ‘OK, let me just switch that on’ even if I’m having the worst day ever, I’ve still got to prove to them that I am actually funny in person.
Presenting for me is the end goal, I’d definitely say TV is where I want to end up.
GK Barry
"Otherwise, they’re going to go back to their friends and be like ‘she was so boring.’
"And then when I get cancelled it will all come out, people will say: ‘Yeah, well when I met her once she was a boring b***h.'"
She added that being funny as a female leads to constant back-handed compliments and double standards.
"Do you know what really p**ses me off? When people message me and say: ‘You’re the only funny female I’ve ever met.’
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"I’m just thinking: ‘What kind of girls are you hanging around with because all the girls I know are hilarious.’
"You haven’t gone up to a man and gone ‘You’re really funny for a bloke.’
"There’s different levels to humour and I don’t think it matters if you’re a boy or a girl."
And while the content creator is currently focused on her jungle adventure, she admitted that TV appearances are the direction she'd like to continue going in.
"I’d love to go to presenting my own series type thing, doing presenting for me is the end goal, I’d definitely say TV is where I want to end up," she said.
GK shared how she hopes her professionalism will outweigh her often crass humour when it comes to developing her career further.
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"I would say I’m intimidated in professional settings because I’ve never been in situations like that before so I don’t really know how to act,"; she explained.
"I know people don’t take me seriously but they will after they’re worked with me."
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