Popular YouTube drama channel ‘Spill Sesh’ has finally revealed her identity after publishing videos anonymously for nearly five years.
The Spill Sesh channel launched in January 2019 with short videos about celebrity and influencer drama relayed via text on screen. Spilly, the anonymous persona behind the channel, added voiceovers to her content soon after its launch, utilising an audio distortion filter to hide her real voice.
At the time, drama channels were beginning to solidify themselves as an important source of creator news following 2018’s Dramaggedon 1.
Just months after Spill Sesh launched, Tati Westbrook uploaded her infamous BYE SISTER… video against James Charles (now referred to as Dramaggedon 2). The video kicked off one of the most dramatic “cancellations” in YouTube history and helped catapult the success of several tea channels, including Spill Sesh.
The channel became a favourite amongst internet culture enthusiasts for its high production quality and unbiased reporting.
As the Spill Sesh channel grew, so did speculation about Spilly’s identity. Though anonymous channels are not unusual in the drama and commentary space, those at the helm of these channels have faced criticism over the years for evading accountability by hiding behind anonymity when covering sensitive topics.
This criticism came to a head in August 2019 when Paige Christie, another popular commentary creator, published an exposé claiming that a multi-media content farm was behind several anonymous drama channels posing as independent single-creator channels.
While the exposé did not include Spill Sesh, Paige’s revelation raised concerns about the ethical implications of consuming news from anonymous sources. Based on the production quality of Spilly’s videos and her frequency of posting, many users started to believe that Spill Sesh was possibly run by a company, as well.
Later that year, a new theory emerged about Spill Sesh— that the channel was produced by Shane Dawson’s team and voiced by his sister-in-law and fellow YouTuber, Morgan Adams.
This theory gained traction after Shane published a vlog in which he asked Morgan to speak into a voice distortion filter. Users noted the similarity between Spilly’s voice and Morgan’s voice when put through this filter. Again, fans also pointed to the high production quality of Spill Sesh’s videos, noting that Shane had the team and resources available to launch a drama channel of this caliber with ease.
Despite several attempts to debunk the rumours about her identity over the years, Spilly could not shake this particular theory. Until today.
On November 3rd, Spill Sesh uploaded a long-awaited identity reveal to the channel’s 720K subscribers. After almost five years of speculation, Spilly’s identity was revealed as a young woman named Kristi Cook.
In the video, Kristi discusses the story of Spill Sesh while beauty YouTuber Manny Gutierrez AKA Manny MUA does her makeup— a “full circle” moment she notes, as her very first video was about Manny.
Kristi explains that she’s always had a love of YouTube and had numerous channels prior to finding success with Spill Sesh.
As evidenced by her channel’s reporting style, Kristi also reveals that she has a background in entertainment journalism, landing a writing job for USA Today when she was just 18 years old. Kristi went on to work for Warner Brothers Studios where she was a tour guide and later a production assistant for the Ellen Degeneres Show, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and The Real.
She parlayed this experience into a job at TMZ, where she worked for their galleries department for four years.
On starting Spill Sesh, Kristi said she was fresh off a bad breakup and decided to start making YouTube videos about creators and influencers. Her big break came when Trisha Paytas uploaded a video “exposing” the Vlog Squad and quickly deleted it. Lucky for Kristi, she had already downloaded the video before Trisha removed it.
“I was like, I’m sitting on gold,” Kristi tells Manny. “I edited a video so fast like never before.”
Kristi goes on to reveal that she has been entrenched in the LA influencer space for many years, partying at the Team 10 House and attending events with high-profile creators like Tana Mongeau and Brooke Schofield.
As for why Kristi has decided to reveal her identity now, she tells Manny that she has projects in the works that she hopes to pursue with her name attached.
She finishes her reveal video saying her subscribers have changed her life and she’s excited to bring them more content as Kristi, not Spilly.