Party Princess Goes Viral for Gaslighting Children (Exclusive)

Gabriella Rae knew she was destined to be a party princess.

Living in Oklahoma City, as a high school student, she “stalked” the Instagram feed for her now-employer, Character Connection Co., until she saw they were holding auditions for new princess performers. At 17, her mom had to drive her, and she performed some monologues and sang a song.

When they asked her to do her audition a second time, she thought, “Oh my gosh, I completely screwed it up, but they had just apparently really liked it and just wanted to hear me do it again.”

Any of Rae’s more than 310 thousand TikTok followers could have told you that she was a shoe-in to land a job as a part-time princess — the now-24-year-old has the soft, sweet voice, the big, shiny eyes and a spirit of radiant kindness that have made so many animated characters the favorites of children everywhere.

And Rae was one of those kids, once upon a time. “I will never feel more beautiful than I felt out in those Disney store princess gowns,” she says. Princessing as a job seems an ideal way to use her creative talents, spend time with kids and make money. 

After years of in-person success, Rae started posting on TikTok in the summer of 2024 to share the many tips and tricks she’s discovered over the years. Her first success featured her dressed up as a certain animated mermaid, explaining how she “gaslights children” so that they can’t tell she’s not the “real” princess. She got over 200 thousand views. Her next gaslighting video, where she and another performer explained how to “gaslight” kids into thinking they were two snowy sisters from Arendelle, racked up over 3 million views. 

“I’m so passionate about people doing things correctly,” Rae says. “I have a lot of knowledge I’ve collected in this little noggin that is not useful in any other career, but [I thought] maybe people on TikTok would want to hear what I say.” That knowledge includes minute details about the princesses’ different personalities, hand gestures, vocabulary and voices. And don’t forget about the importance of proper wig placement.

But it’s not that Rae thinks she’s better than other princess performers. “It’s all from doing the dumb thing myself. It’s not me looking at other people being like, ‘No, they suck,’” she says. It’s about her remembering her own mistakes.

One of the toughest moments to navigate as a princess, Rae says, is when she does a party where the movie is playing next to her. “Kids are smart,” she says. “I remember one of the only times I didn’t wear green contacts for Rapunzel. I was standing right next to a giant Rapunzel poster, and the little girl looked at the poster and looked at me and was like, ‘Your eyes are not green.’ And I was like, well, ‘I’m never doing that again.’” She told the child something about how the “magical portal” to their world changed her eyes. No word on whether they believed her.

Though Rae’s videos were intended for other party performers, dozens of her commenters remark that, though they’ve never been a party princess, they find themselves riveted by her videos. And Rae has found herself in the middle of PrincessTok, which has united party princesses, cosplayers and wig makers across the app.

“Everybody loves Disney. Everybody loves Princesses. Everybody grew up on that,” she says of her following, who she thinks are also attracted to the nostalgia of it all. Plus, she thinks her “huge costumes, big beautiful wigs and drag queen makeup” are particularly eye-catching and engaging in the app’s constant churn. 

“I was in one of the worst places in my life when I started creating content, and TikTok has truly changed my life,” she says. “I’ve gotten to connect with so many wonderful people who have told me that my content helps me reconnect with their childhood selves.” The money from the app has also let her take her friends to Disney for the first time. 

At her quickest, Rae can do her makeup and put on her wig in 40 minutes, but she much prefers to take her time. “Sometimes I’m literally up there at 5 in the morning when my gig isn’t until 11 because I want to get there when there’s nobody there and do my makeup in peace and film and get there,” she says.

“The children make it so worth it,” she says. “They really do have such a teeny tiny little period in their life where they actually believe in magic, and I feel like it’s getting younger and younger now. When I can tell that they truly, truly believe that I am the real thing, that is so magical to me.”

And even a princess has her TikTok haters. Some people criticize her for being so nitpicky about her standards, but she thinks if you’re getting hired for a party, you have to do your best. “This is a business. People are paying for a princess to come,” she says. “People are counting on you to be magical.”

Rae is such a natural princess that in her other life as an actress, she has to un-princess herself. “When I go into auditions and callbacks, I remind myself not to be a princess, to be more authentically myself and not presentational,” she says. But it has made her a “more confident actor.”

For any aspiring princesses, her advice is to take some acting classes to practice speaking to groups of people. As for her trademark gaslighting, she says the key is to redirect kids when they start asking too many questions, and don’t get lost in a tangle of answers. “Sometimes when you try to overexplain yourself, or you have to keep coming up with excuses, it starts to become a little bit less believable,” she says. But be prepared to know the lore. 

Stuff like makeup and hair, she promises, you can learn, but her last tip is not negotiable. 

She warns, “Make sure you actually like being around children.”