FROM PUB ROOTS TO THE PIT LANE
CALLIE COOKE
WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHY by Beth Bennett
SHOOT LOCATION – Swingers, London
On a unusually hot June day in London, Callie Cooke arrives for our interview fresh off a long-haul flight, still buzzing from the world premiere of her latest project, F1: The Movie. Despite the jet lag, her energy is light, airy and brimming with excitement. Perhaps best known for her performances in British comedies, Callie is now shifting gears, quite literally, as she takes on the high-octane world of Formula 1 in her newest role.
We sat down to talk about everything from her comedic instincts and her time in the Doctor Who universe, to how she carves out space for play amidst a packed schedule. And yes, she had stories to tell about filming on live race tracks, psyching herself up for a scene alongside Brad Pitt, and the thrill of stepping into one of the most adrenaline-fueled roles of her career.
A self-effacing declaration, microphone firm in hand, stood atop the stage in the cramped backroom of the Bill Murray in North London: “I became a white woman on a healing journey.”
The words, projected on a large backdrop, flash bright yellow against a serene photo of clouds. Riotous laughter breaks out across the wonderfully varied audience. And the speaker? Grace Helbig. She chuckles along, pleased with the landing, before diving right back into the moment she found out she had breast cancer.
Yes. Breast cancer.
This is the second night of preview shows for Grace’s Edinburgh Fringe stand-up set, Let Me Get This Off My Chest, marking her debut at the internationally renowned festival. Born from her diagnosis of triple-positive breast cancer in early 2023, the show offers a fresh take on comedy-from-trauma. While Grace’s battle with illness forms the bulk of the story, what the show really wrestles with is the relentless push and pull of authenticity and identity in the digital age.
For the uninitiated, Grace Helbig can firmly be considered one of the original influencers, although I can feel her balk at the term. Years before the word entered our lexicon, Grace was tucked away in her tiny Brooklyn kitchen, between service jobs and improv sets, creating camera-facing comedy content to post on YouTube. Employed by My Damn Channel to produce the digital series Daily Grace, she was one of the first to be paid for content creation — way before Google’s acquisition of the platform brought monetisation, algorithms, and a whole new media industry.
What followed was over a decade of producing content about herself as a living, spawning opportunities like two New York Times bestselling books, two feature films co-created with close friends, a talk show on E!, and a comfortable life in Los Angeles (complete, of course, with a particularly persistent gang of gardening raccoons).
Yet this was new media: reality TV delivered through a Polaroid camera — instant, constant, and overtly personal reportage. There was a veneer, yes, a sense of performance, but ultimately this career depends on the act of being oneself. There was no manual provided on how to balance work and life here. Everything you do becomes content. Every relationship a collab. Every major life update a special announcement. How did you even begin, back then, to navigate that?
What’s always fascinated me about Grace — and her best friend, comedy counterpart and podcast co-host Mamrie Hart — is the level of restraint in sharing their personal lives. Older millennials, the two stood out against the barrage of content creators gathering audiences in the late 2000s for their tongue-in-cheek comedy bits, command of the camera, and how they’d drop in small anecdotes of their lives but divulge little insight. (A specific instance being Mamrie’s choice not to disclose her boyfriend of eight years to her YouTube audience, only doing so when the break-up led to her adventurous thirties that saw her move across the country).
Perhaps that’s what drew in views in those early days — a sense of something different, authentic and entertaining but without feeling invasive. In the company of New Girl and Lena Dunham’s Girls, Grace and Mamrie were able to straddle that line between fiction and reality — the internet’s big sisters, real people, yet never too real as to feel voyeuristic. I ask Grace about this the next day. Tucked away in a bar off Oxford Street before we both head north — me home, Grace up to Edinburgh for the first show of her Fringe debut. She’s easy company, her humour and charm effortless, while her answers remain thoughtful and measured.
“You have to figure out what’s comfortable for you and try to stay on that even when you get caught up in the pressure of having to make something. It doesn’t always happen. There are times when I wish I had kept certain things to myself, certain relationships I wish I hadn’t shared as much, because when things change you have this sense of responsibility almost to share that too. It’s hard. It’s always been hard.”
This question of authenticity circles back.
“What made YouTube special back then was that people were doing it for the sheer fact of doing it. People were making videos with friends because it was something to do. They were sharing comedy sketches, movie reviews, because they could. You were talking to everyone and no one at the same time. You were yourself because there was no reason not to be.”
But then audiences trickled in, slowly, and then all at once. A surge in coverage (not all of it good — Grace fondly brings up an old New York Post article as part of her stand-up set). More people turned on their cameras. It was all hashtag collabs. Hashtag spon. Hashtag book deals, world tours, and endless clamouring for more, more, more. Platforms popped up: Twitter, Vine (RIP), Instagram, and TikTok. More people, more places, more of you needed to stay relevant, stay comfortable, stay present.
“It affected my content, sure. I’ve talked myself out of posting so many things because I didn’t think people would want something different, or because that wasn’t trending in the algorithm at the time, or because... because I filmed, edited it, and hated it. So you do censor yourself, become less of yourself, and then you just end up hating everything you’re doing.”
Which is why, I suppose, fifteen years later, not many of the original content creators have stuck around. If they have, it’s following a long break (Daniel Howell), or they’ve pivoted to different types of content (Zoe Sugg, Jack Harries). Grace herself posts only ‘consistently inconsistent’ on YouTube, with her and Mamrie spending their time instead on their comedy chatter podcast This Might Get Weird.
“It’s exhausting for a lot of people to sustain that level of talking about yourself.”
A self-confessed people-pleasing introvert, Grace admits to always struggling with her sense of self.
“That’s what drew me to Mamrie, I think. I was maybe a little envious but in a way that made me want to learn from her. She’s someone who’s unapologetically herself and she’s so centred in her body in a way I could have only ever hoped to be.”
She takes a pause, a small, wry smile signalling an incoming joke.
“Which is exactly what breast cancer gave me.”
In early 2023, Grace was diagnosed with triple-positive breast cancer after bringing up a new lump during a routine gynaecology appointment. “I wasn’t even going to mention it,” she confesses. “It was definitely nothing. That’s what was in my head. I, and I’m very lucky to be able to say this, hadn’t been exposed to cancer in my family. It wasn’t something that happened to us. So it was definitely fine. Normal. But something in me just knew I had to mention it, so I did. And then... it all happened.”
In her show, Grace goes into more detail, explaining the experience of finding out while she and her husband, comedian Elliott Morgan, were meeting with a landscaper. She talks about weighing up whether to tell her family or not, whether to tell anyone really, and what the hell she was going to do about the YouTube of it all. For someone so used to turning life into content, performing vulnerability with a thick veneer of sardonic wit, this was a moment that brought her to an abrupt halt.
“Even though I’d stepped back from posting as much on my channel over the past few years, it’s still my job.”
Grace’s video disclosing her diagnosis is still available to watch on her channel and the outpouring of support for the internet’s big sister demonstrates the positives of digital communities.
“It was overwhelming, really. People I hadn’t spoken to in forever were messaging me and wishing me well and... It was a lot. That level of vulnerability is naturally very difficult for me but I’m glad I did it. It sort of started this period of being more sincere and kinder to myself.”
The shift in Grace’s content is stark but almost beautiful to see. She chose to document her cancer journey mostly for herself, knowing she’d likely forget things in the fog of ‘chemo brain’ or try to repress it all in a tried and tested coping mechanism. She retains that same wit but it isn’t used to hide vulnerabilities anymore; instead it’s just Grace’s natural charm. She doesn’t exploit herself in these videos, filming only when she’s feeling positive and reflected, yet without glossing over the bad and the ugly and the endless diarrhoea of it all (like the raccoons, a persistent occurrence in Grace’s life apparently).
“I didn’t have to be ‘on’ when making these videos. I mean, I had to be physically and mentally present in myself but I wasn’t performing. I didn’t need to ‘punch up’ my content to be funny. I just had to be.”
And that’s resonated beyond content creation. Her breast cancer diagnosis forced her to confront parts of herself she hadn’t really allowed to acknowledge the needs of before. She was forced into rest, reflection, and real self-care. The cancer journey forced her to slow down, to accept the burnout she’d been riding on. This existential shift taught her to understand her body’s limits and needs, to honour pain and vulnerability. The experience of having cancer, Grace details, ended up being, in some weird, paradoxical way, her way of healing. For someone who had always felt unsure of herself, this pause became a moment of self-reckoning.
It seems almost a disservice then, I can hear the critique, to revert back to habits familiar and take this experience and turn it into a comedy show. Grace explains it simply.
“What I went through was very traumatic and, for me, comedy has always been, since way back in high school, a way for me to process and move on from my trauma. What I’ve been careful with here, and I hope that comes across in the set, is to make sure that I’m not minimising the experience. I cover the hardest parts of the story — telling my husband, my parents, the night I had to go to the Emergency Room because of how sick I was — because I need to be able to feel those feelings again in a safe, supported space.”
That space being a stage in front of about a hundred strangers every night for a month?
She laughs because that’s nothing compared to a million strangers on the internet every week for fifteen years.
And that’s the heart of Grace’s story. From South New Jersey, to New York, to Los Angeles, and here in the UK now. From You’ve Been Hazed! to Cheers Mamrie Hart! It’s that glorious contradiction of a life built in the digital age and the raw reality of who you are. Audiences, fans, whatever term you decide, often confuse an authentic person with someone who shares every facet of their personal life, but that’s not what it is, not really.
“I don’t feel like I’m more authentic for sharing my experience with breast cancer, I feel more authentic because I’ve become more comfortable in sharing my vulnerabilities.”
Is comfortable the right word?
“Maybe not, actually. But I know it’s what I need to do so it’s probably going to work out in the long run.”
Grace’s shift from the curated, edited content to live stand-up is full-circle for her, while also being a brave new chapter for her to exist in her vulnerabilities in the immediacy of a live audience. Let Me Get This Off My Chest puts sincerity and trauma front and centre, asking audiences to laugh with her at the ridiculousness of being human. For longtime fans and newcomers alike, it’s a special kind of show that invites a different intimacy that will have you crying and laughing and leaving grateful that the world managed to keep a little bit of grace. (It had to be done.)
And don’t forget: “Book your mammograms!”
Let Me Get This Off My Chest is on at the Jack Dome @ Pleasance during Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Tickets are available here.
Follow Grace: @gracehelbig / @thismightget