Addison Rae Covers ELLE’s May 2025 ‘Women in Music’ Issue

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Addison Rae covers ELLE’s May 2025 Women in Music Issue, and in conversation with Suzy Exposito, reflects on the unexpected path that brought her from Louisiana dance studios to the frontlines of pop culture and how she’s learning to move through it all with more intention. With a new movie (Animal Friends, alongside Aubrey Plaza and Dan Levy), fresh music on the way, and a deeper sense of self, Rae isn’t reinventing herself. She’s just finally catching up to who she’s always been. “I feel like I’ve surpassed Addison Rae,” she says. “It’s just Addison now.”

In the cover story, Rae opens up about dropping out of LSU and moving to LA, betting everything on a gut feeling, and the early TikTok hustle that helped her build a career out of nothing but a camera and a dream. She talks about growth, creative freedom, and what it means to build a life outside of what the internet expects: “I have the luxury now to say no to things I’m not interested in, or that don’t feel like me or aren’t reflective of who I am. It’s still a job, at the end of the day. Everybody is trying to survive—I’m trying to survive and live here and do all these things that I love—but I definitely have become more intentional, because I do think saying no to things opens up a door for a much better yes.”

Addison also answered ELLE’s burning questions for the Ask Me Anything video series, revealing everything from the unexpected pop star who slid into her DMs to the best piece of advice she got from Charli XCX. She opens up about perfecting her now iconic Von Dutch scream, what it’s like to be Julia Fox’s muse, and why her debut album feels bold, personal, and sonically unique. She also shares her proudest red carpet moment and the career milestone that has meant the most to her.

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Addison on stepping into a new kind of role with her upcoming film Animal Friends (starring alongside Aubrey Plaza and Dan Levy): “It’s definitely a 180 from everything else I’ve done,” Rae says. “I’m really playing a character in this one. In my other projects, I’ve not really played someone much different from myself. He’s All That was pretty on the nose for my life at the time—being the influencer. And same with Thanksgiving—I was kind of playing myself.”

Addison on outgrowing the influencer box: “I feel like I’ve surpassed Addison Rae,” she says. “It’s just Addison now.”

Addison on realizing college wasn’t the right fit for her and trusting her gut to drop out and pursue her dreams of performing full time:  She began pursuing a major in broadcast journalism, but found herself “struggling really hard, because it’s f**king miserable to write papers about s**t you don’t care about,” she says. “I was like, ‘Wow, what am I going to do?’ I really just wanted to perform. I wanted to honor the passion and desire to entertain that was inside of me, but I also didn’t want to struggle, and make my family struggle, as a result of that dream.”

She’d also joined a then little-known app called TikTok and was beginning to grow her following. “I asked my counselor, like, ‘What do I do?’” she says. “And she was like, ‘Girl, LSU will be here forever.’ So I was like, ‘Okay, I need to drop out.’ I just had this really strong intuition and gut feeling that, as unrealistic as it seemed, I needed to do it—there’s no time like now to try and chase those dreams.”

On moving to LA and began pursuing every job opportunity she could get her hands on: “I was doing any sponsored video I could do to make money to try and make this work for myself,” Rae says. “That’s why I was posting so much. I was like, ‘There’s only one chance.’ It was a big bet to make, and I knew I would hate myself if I didn’t try as hard as I could to make this happen.”

“It was an intense period of my life—there was a lot of work that went into us living there—but I also had so much fun while I was doing it all,” she says. “I wasn’t going to let being cringe and posting a million videos stop me. And now that I look back at it, I don’t feel embarrassed about anything I ever posted. I can appreciate that girl and say that was a girl who was going to make it happen, no matter what that meant doing.”

Addison on navigating family dynamics in the spotlight: After signing with WME, she asked her parents to move to L.A., too, telling them she didn’t know how she was going to live this life alone. So they found a way to get themselves to the West Coast city, even joining TikTok, dancing alongside their daughter. At times, her parents’ tit-for-tat relationship conflicts have blown up fantastically on TikTok; Rae says she now refrains from checking her parents’ social media. “My family has taken a step back and become much more private,” she notes. “Family is always tricky, but at the end of the day, you love them and you take the good and try to leave the bad in the past. Nobody’s perfect.”

Addison on the connection between dance and her sound: “Growing up as a dancer was such a natural transition into that sound,” Rae says. “I was interested in how that music made you feel, and how it made your body move. I think music is mind control—it opens up this portal of energy.”

Addison on the unexpected inspiration behind  her single “High Fashion”: Rae’s hit “High Fashion” began with a Pinterest post that made her laugh: “It was like, ‘F**k cocaine—let’s get high on fashion!’” she recalls. “It was like, ‘I don’t need your drugs.’ As in, ‘I don’t need this person’s addictive energy in my life, I’d rather have high fashion,’” Rae explains.

Addison on filming the “High Fashion” video in her home state of Louisiana and always knowing she wanted to be a star: “It was really important for me to film in Louisiana, because I feel like it’s a reflection of the way I felt growing up and then moving to L.A.—you know, the Wizard of Oz of it all,” Rae says. “I just felt like a fish out of water, in a way. But I always knew I wanted to be famous, to be a movie star, to be a singer—to just be a performer. That was always something I wanted—the glamour and the fashion. It’s almost like I’m convincing myself in this song, like, ‘No, I don’t want this—I want the fashion, I want the childhood dreams, I want that life. Don’t forget, don’t fall in love—you’d rather get these dreams accomplished.’”

Addison on her evolving relationships and tuning into herself: She groans when I ask about her actual love life; she’s been linked to Grammy-nominated producer Omer Fedi for nearly four years. But instead of diving into their relationship, she demurs, saying, “I think all relationships in my life right now are going through a transformation in a lot of ways, whether that’s good or bad or confusing or not. And I think it’s just a lot of self-confrontation right now in these moments, and just figuring out what I really want to do and what feels right.”

Addison on making choices that reflect who she really is: “I have the luxury now to say no to things I’m not interested in, or that don’t feel like me or aren’t reflective of who I am. It’s still a job, at the end of the day. Everybody is trying to survive—I’m trying to survive and live here and do all these things that I love—but I definitely have become more intentional, because I do think saying no to things opens up a door for a much better yes.”

Addison on using TikTok as a launchpad to her real dreams: “I acknowledge how lucky I am that I was on TikTok, and people cared enough to watch my videos and follow me, and therefore gave me the freedom to be able to explore my deep desires that I’ve always had. It’s like, ‘What am I going to do? Not chase my dreams because I feel like I haven’t done enough school to get here? Or I haven’t had enough experience?’ It’s like, ‘No, the door opened for me, and I’m going to go through and explore it.’”

Addison on finding possibility beyond what she ever imagined: ​​“I’ve definitely gotten much further than I expected to,” she adds. “And I do thank L.A. for that, honestly, because the world seemed so small when I lived in Louisiana. And the world feels so much bigger here.”

ADDISON RAE COVERS ELLE’S MAY 2025 ‘WOMEN IN MUSIC’ ISSUE On newsstands May 6th.

Photographer: Ellen von Unwerth
Stylist: Alex White
Writer: Suzy Exposito
Hair: Clayton Hawkins
Makeup: Leah Darcy
Manicure: Natalie Minerva

[Photo Credit: Ellen von Unwerth for ELLE Magazine]

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