Mamrie Hart Talks YDAD Book and Needing a Drink
Shannan Singletary ’16 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer
Clear liquor, corn syrup, red food coloring, and iron pills. What do these items all have in common? They are all the ingredients in one of Mamrie Hart’s most recent cocktails, dedicated to Taylor Swift’s Bad Blood music video (the crushed up iron pills give it that blood taste). On her YouTube channel, You Deserve a Drink, Hart makes signature cocktails, topped full of puns, correlating to a celebrity, YouTuber, or aspect of pop culture deemed worthy of a drink that week. The show has garnered more than 900,000 subscribers in its four years, racking up 43 million views.
On top of her popular YouTube channel, Hart is also the host of the travel web series Hey USA, where she travels to various cities in the United States with different YouTube stars. Hey USA recently finished its second season, all of the episodes are available on TheScene.com.
Her new book, You Deserve a Drink: Boozy Misadventures and Tales of Debauchery, was released this May and quickly became a New York Times Best Seller. The book recounts raunchy and hilarious stories from Hart’s life, each partnered with its own signature cocktail.
Emertainment Monthly recently got the chance to talk to Hart about her new book, her channel, and who really deserves a drink!
Emertainment Monthly: Your new book You Deserve a Drink was just released! Was there any part of writing the YDAD book or the process of it being published that you found surprising?
Marie Hart: How terrible I am with punctuation! Seriously. This book is the first thing that I have written that isn’t in script form. In scripts, you can chalk up run on sentences to being a ‘character trait’. Between that and my constant tendency to want to speak in text slang, my editor had a challenge on her hands.
EM:Each of the personal stories in your book are correlated with a drink recipe. Out of all of the recipes in the book, which is your favorite?
MH: I cannot choose between my children. How dare you!
EM:Your main YouTube channel is beginning to approach one million subscribers. How are you going to celebrate once you reach the one million mark?
MH:I hear naps are fun! In all honesty, between the madness of touring with my travel series HeyUSA, right up to the craziness of the book tour, if all goes as planned, I will hit a million while on my first vacation in four years. I will celebrate with sippin’ and sleepin’…. My favorite combo.
EM:How do you feel the book relates to what you do on Youtube? Would you say it was big change or is it a similar style?
MH: There are definitely elements of my series in the book. Such as the recipes, the built-in drinking game, the complete and utter lack of embarrassment from terrible jokes. But the book is definitely a different side of me. I don’t really talk about my personal life on YouTube and this is an in-depth look at the ridiculous life I’ve led that fostered my personality.
EM:On season 2 of HeyUSA, you have traveled around the country with various YouTube stars to locations chosen by last season’s co-host Grace Helbig. What is the best place you’ve gotten to go to on this season of HeyUSA?
MH: Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge, [Tennessee] was amazing. The perfect combo of kitsch and weird. But few things can compare to shooting zombies in Vegas with Tyler Oakley or going in drag with Colleen Ballinger. I laughed so much this season, it hurt.
EM: Lastly, who do you think really deserves a drink right now?
MH: ME! My book just became a NY Times Best Seller! I found out while waiting to do a signing in Kansas City. My celebration was a drink by myself at an Outback in the mall parking lot. I’m ready to properly crack open some champagne. Preferably with a sword.
For more Mamrie check out her book tour or one of her shows with fellow Youtubers, Hannah Hart and Grace Helbig, for one of the Holy Trinity’s No Filter Shows, information at YDADbook.com. Learn how to make your own Bad Blood in the latest episode of You Deserve a Drink!