Halfway through the finale of Earle Meets World, Alix Earle’s mom asks her what’s stressing her out “the most.” Earle, the 25-year-old TikTok phenom, answers quickly: “That I can’t post right now without everyone attacking me.”
Such is the plight of the modern star. Earle started gaining followers by posting “get ready with me” videos on TikTok four years ago, when she was a senior at the University of Miami. She quickly became very, very famous, starring in ads for Carl’s Jr., Pantene, and Hawaiian Tropic, appearing (and doing pretty well on) the last season of Dancing With the Stars, and hanging around Tom Brady. Earle Meets World offers fans an eight-episode window into her life as a mega-influencer — the kind of career 57 percent of Gen-Zers say they want.
The series, which is available in its entirety today on Netflix, also showcases Earle’s big, blended family: dad, stepmom, mom, mom’s boyfriend, sister, and three younger half-siblings. The Kardashians are an obvious influence. Ben Winston, the executive producer behind The Kardashians on Hulu, is also an executive producer here.
But at least the Kardashians had fun in the beginning. Remember when Kris yelled at Kim for snapping selfies while taking Khloé to jail (for violating her probation after a DUI)? There is no such levity among Earle’s family when something goes wrong. When Earle tells her mom that she can’t post without everyone attacking her, she is ruminating on her TikTok feud with her former podcast boss, Call Her Daddy’s Alex Cooper. Her mom and the rest of the family react to this conflict with solemn terror.
Earle and her family seem almost paralyzed by their luck — they know they have a golden ticket, but they’re not quite sure what to do with it. In the premiere episode, Earle goes out to dinner with her friend/social-media assistant Sally, who self-identifies as a “nepo friend.” They toast with skinny, spicy margaritas to a personal “rebrand” — except they can’t articulate what that should look like, exactly.
The rest of the family shuffles through their lives, mostly in their cavernous homes in New Jersey, as Earle pops in from her apartment in L.A., fashion shows in Paris, and brand activations in Nashville. Ashtin, her close-in-age sister, is halfheartedly modeling (she calls herself a “nepo sister”). Her dad, TJ, runs his asphalt-paving business while also serving as her manager (er, “dadager”). He jokes about setting up her mom, Alisa — his ex-wife — on The Golden Bachelor. Earle’s 13-year-old half-sister, Izabel, has started posting outfit-reveal videos to TikTok, a development her parents treat as an inevitability.
Unfortunately, Earle does not have much narrative to offer beyond her relationships with this crew. It’s clear Brady did not agree to be filmed or featured on this show — she never mentions him by name. Her recent ex-boyfriend, Braxton Berrios, too, is loath to be involved: When she calls him in episode three and begrudgingly alerts him to the fact that she’s “filming right now,” he hangs up the phone. She does delve into her ongoing feud with Cooper, but even now, months after Cooper called her out on TikTok and years after their business relationship ended, Earle struggles to explain what happened.
Cooper “scares” her, she tells her family over a plethora of carefully placed Dunkin’ Donuts iced drinks in her mom’s New Jersey backyard. They all already know Earle’s version of what happened, kind of: Cooper embarrassed her in some early podcast episodes by asking frank questions about her sexual history; she made promises about the business that she failed to keep; she took advantage of the fact that Earle was young and naïve and idolized her. Fans hoping for receipts, or even one particular story about the falling-out to grab onto, however, will be disappointed.
The most interesting conflict on the show is the one between Earle; her sister, Ashtin; and their stepmom, Ashley Dupré. Yes, the very same Ashley Dupré who found herself at the center of a media shitstorm back in 2008, when she was identified by the press as one of the escorts involved in former New York governor Eliot Spitzer’s prostitution scandal. She shopped around different reality-show concepts at the time and ultimately starred in the little-seen VH1 competition reality show Famous Food alongside Heidi Montag and Juicy J.
Alix, Ashtin, and Dupré exist in uneasy peace: Some 17 years into Dupré’s relationship with their dad, the girls haven’t forgotten that the whole thing started as an affair that broke up their family, and Dupré hasn’t let go of all the times Alix and Ashtin put toothpaste in her shoes as preteens.
Dupré is also still unsure of what to make of her mid-2000s infamy (and the fact that Alix talked about it on Call Her Daddy with Cooper — another point of contention). During the third episode, on a family trip to Aspen, Dupré attempts to relate to Alix and Ashtin’s dating woes by explaining why she got into escort work when she was their age.
“Why do you think I got into the situation that I got in?” she says. “Like, I was working all these jobs and trying to pay my bills and stuff, and I was dating guys and they were all cheating, and somebody came up to me and said, ‘You can do this,’ and I said, ‘Okay, I want to not have emotion, and be like a guy.’”
“I don’t really know what Ashley’s saying to me anymore,” Ashtin tells Alix later when they’re getting ready to go out. “I didn’t get what she was saying either,” Alix admits. Ah, well.
In the end, the only thing Earle can do is keep making content. She spends the majority of the finale episode going back and forth about how to respond to Cooper’s TikTok callout, ultimately deciding not to get specific about the feud and post a video of herself pole dancing instead.
“I feel like I have to post something, and I need to get back to posting videos,” she tells her family, who are all sitting in one bed together, scrolling on their phones. “It’s just like, people are going to be annoyed,” Ashtin warns. The scene is emblematic of the entire show: One woman posts, and her entourage hopes the public likes it enough to keep them all employed.
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