Meet Delaney Rowe
If you want to see actor, writer and content creator Delaney Rowe (outside of the agonizingly astute TikToks in which she depicts, with alarming accuracy, the worst iteration of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl), you’ll have to lure her out of her favorite, cocoon-like corner of her LA home, where she’ll be watching the original Gossip Girl and working on a book of essays, with a reservation at one of her favorite restaurants — don’t try to spice things up, she knows you don’t actually want to take a pottery class with her, just hit up the raw bar. We had the chance to talk with Delaney about the tap dance performances she foisted upon her parents as a kid, developing self-consciousness and a penchant for cringey moments, the luxury of having obsessions, and more — read on below.
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on her morning routine
If I'm home, I'm going to get up around seven or eight AM. I'm building in that 30-minute chill-in-bed time when I'm scrolling on Instagram and TikTok, checking email, and responding to texts. I need a slow morning, I am not somebody who shoots out of bed. Then, I have a battle with a liter of water in a mason jar. I'll fill it up in the morning and then forget about it until about six PM — the idea is that I'm going to drink it. Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. Then, I either make Canyon Coffee in the French press here, or I'll do an Earl Grey with Stevia and milk, or I'll go to this coffee shop called Eightfold. Next, I make breakfast — I'm an “eat first thing in the morning” girl these days. My go-to is two eggs over easy with stewed tomatoes and spinach, I'll have that over quinoa. That's a perfect breakfast for me. I don't snack, I like to have three big meals. I can't go right into work. I need something work-adjacent to sort of warm me up, so I like to read in the morning. I'll either read some fiction that I'm in the middle of, or I'll go on The Paris Review and read whatever daily thing they have up, or like, The New Yorker, the Daily Shouts — it makes me feel like I'm shaking up my creativity a little bit. I'll start getting serious about work around 11 AM. I’ll sit down, maybe I'll get the camera out.
on growing up as a theater kid
Idaho is exactly what you would imagine — really outdoorsy. If you're not outdoorsy, I'm not sure what you're doing there. I'm not outdoorsy, of course, but my parents are… They’re the crunchy, skiing-in-the-winter and mountain-biking-in-the-summer kind of people. I wasn't super into that, but there's an interesting little theater scene in Idaho that I was really involved with.It’s embarrassing, but I was a theater kid. I was also doing ballet at Ballet Idaho, and I was so disinterested in doing anything else. I was painting a lot — I would smoke weed before school and then go to my AP Painting class. It was my first class, and then I would ditch the rest. I got really good at ditching class. I’d make it through the day, and then after school was theater.
There was no question of what I wanted to be when I grew up — I’ve wanted to be an actress for as long as I can remember, maybe since around the time when I started watching movies and actually knew what was going on. “Oh, that's a job? Why wouldn't everyone want to do that?”
I didn’t make home videos, it was far more embarrassing — I got tap shoes but didn’t take any lessons. I thought I would teach myself how to tap dance, and then I forced my parents’ friends to watch me tap dance in the driveway when they came over for dinner. Thinking about it now, that must have been so humiliating. They’d all be having wine and then I'd be like, “Can we go out to the driveway real quick? I'm going to do my tap routine.” Actually, how dare they let me!? I feel very lucky to have very supportive parents, but at the same time, you have to tell your kid when they're not good at something.
““I had really good relationships with my teachers. When you can be honest with teachers about how you learn, what’s not working for you, and why you can’t figure out how to get certain things done, they can be really helpful. Be friends with your teachers, be honest with them, and manage expectations. My mom would always say ‘managing expectations is the secret to life’ and she instilled that in me in high school. I was very straight up about when I knew I wasn’t gonna be able to turn something in, and I would give them, like, three days’ notice.”
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on her shakespearean background
I came to acting with the help of the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, seeing older actors who would come in from New York to do repertory theater made me really take it seriously. I had no interest in Shakespeare or classical theater before then. Once you start doing Shakespeare training, you can start to learn how to really read Shakespeare, you learn iambic pentameter and scansion and things like that. You start taking acting seriously, probably in a pretentious way. I learned the word “craft” all of a sudden, and I was like, “Oh, there's a technique to this.” It's almost athletic, you know? So I was like, “Okay, now I have this under my belt. Now I'm going to start getting serious about college and auditioning for these conservatories.” I knew I wanted to do real training. I thought I was only ever going to do theater. I loved how… hard theater was. But then you start to do film and television, and you realize that's also its own monster, and it's hard too. You come to LA, and you get roped into it. Now I really love it.
on self-consciousness and superstition
I went back to filming myself once I moved into my apartment because I was not self-conscious about doing this in front of a roommate or anything. You get older, and you become too aware, and you get embarrassed. I don't have that shamelessness that I had when I was a kid or even when I was in high school or college — that has gone away. I am so much more private with everything now. People watching my videos in front of me — I'd rather die. This change happened when I developed a frontal lobe in my early 20s. I think I was really cocky and probably really annoying until I was maybe 24, 25, and then I calmed down a little bit and started realizing the value of actually working on things and keeping them private for as long as possible, then allowing that work to speak for itself instead of just being like, “Look at me! Look at what I'm making, blah blah blah” — that is not my vibe at all anymore.
Now I'm superstitious about it. I don't want to talk about anything that I'm doing because I get so worried that it's not actually going to happen. Have you ever told anybody that something's happening for you, or an opportunity’s coming in, and then you speak too soon and it goes away? Even with romantic partners, you tell your girlfriends about a guy that you're excited about, and as though by magic, as though the universe is hearing you getting excited, it just takes it away. I keep everything close to the chest now, it makes me a lot happier, actually, and less stressed out.
““Instagram is where everyone you know is — it feels really hard to put yourself out there when you know that people who know you are watching. TikTok was newer, so nobody really had it. Also, it’s a place where you can go viral without having a following, so I started doing that. It took a really long time for things to hit. The fake story I tell is that it was 30 videos in 30 days, and boom, but that’s not real. That was just a little quippy way of tying it up, but no, it took maybe a year until I had anything hit.””
on making cringe content
Most of my videos come from something I’ve heard somebody say. I was having someone do my makeup a few months ago, and we were outside and there were mosquitoes, and she was like, “Oh, my God, they love me so much. Mosquitoes are obsessed with me.” And I was like, “Wait, that's so funny,” because there are so many people like that, who are like “No, they love me. I have sweet blood.” So, I did a video called “Narcissist whenever mosquitoes are around.” I was inspired by my friend, KP Parker who did a video “Narcissist whenever they're at a campfire,” because the smoke is only blowing towards them. I thought it was hilarious. I think if I were focused on making content “cringe,” it wouldn't be that, so instead I focus on trying to make the videos really accurate. I think it's that accuracy, the fact that I'm not really winking to the camera, that's what makes it have that cringe effect. I'm really just trying to replicate the person in your life who does that thing or the character in that movie who speaks that way.
on comics that inspire her
I love Kate Berlant, John Early, Rachel Sennott, Lauren Servideo, Phoebe Waller-Bridge. KP Parker, Johnny Berchtold, Tefi, and Drew Afualo are all people you should follow on TikTok.
on the physical effects of work-induced stress
I'm exhausted. I'm ready to transition into something less “instant.” I've really been doing this for a long time, and that sort of instant gratification, the validation of putting up a video and getting all these views is really intense on your system. Writing’s been helpful, because there's nothing instant about that. It's just editing. It is a really long, difficult, but also luxurious process, because you have time, and you get to hold the content close to you for a while before everybody gets to judge it. It’s the opposite on the internet.
I think it's been really wearing on me in a way that I am finally becoming acutely aware of. My cortisol levels were insanely high a few months ago, to the point where I would just wear a hair tie around my wrist, and that would leave a bruise. Really bad bruising, missing periods, losing hair, can be signs of stress. I don't think it's a coincidence that it's been happening in tandem with my really intense addiction to the internet. I don't post as much anymore, only when I want to. That's looking like once a week right now. I need to get back into therapy, but truthfully, and I’ve never had a therapist that I liked. I think once I find that, it'll change my life.
““I think having a couple of different creative endeavors at once is really great, because when one thing isn’t working, you can switch to something else. When TikTok doesn’t feel like it’s hitting, I have these essays to attenuate the pressure of whether a video gets a bunch of views or not. Having a few different nets cast out is helpful, especially in LA, because it’s one of those places where people expect you to have many trades — you can’t really just be an actress, you can’t really just be a content creator anymore. People really value a well-rounded, creative person.””
on her team dynamic
A switch happened recently where I stopped thinking of the people whom I work with as my disciplinarians. It used to feel like when you turned in homework to your teacher, but that sort of dynamic recently switched for me. Now I really see my team, as people who all work together, and we all have a say in how we're gonna get something done. Once I switched to that mentality, instead of feeling like some little kid who was scared of their teacher, everything became better.
on what she’s watching and reading
I think, all the time, “What if I'm not funny, and everybody's lying to me?” I feel like my strategy to combat that is to try to consume as much good stuff as possible, to really be mindful about who I'm following, what kind of stuff I'm watching and reading, because if I'm consuming things that I find smart and funny, I think that can only help develop my taste more. I'm not doing a lot of scrolling these days, to be honest, but when I am, it's a lot of food content. I've really fallen into Jollibee — it's a fast-food restaurant, but honestly, the food looks so good. I've never had it, but I love watching people eat it. It has fried chicken, and weirdly, also pasta. Now I'm in this hole of watching people do mukbangs with Jollibee. I'm also seeing a lot of dating advice videos that are really funny and also really toxic. They ruined my brain for a good year. The worst dating advice I got from my algorithm was to “sink into your dark feminine energy.” What the hell does that mean? My interpretation is someone who carries around their passport with them “just in case,” has too many plans to do anything day of, and is smoking and wearing, you know, wool dusters. I have no idea. It's basically a cool French person. I've never been able to pull that off. I guess it's more of a mindset. In hindsight, there is a little value in it, because I did learn to not push so hard when something's not working out.
In terms of books I’d recommend, I got You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again from passerby via Naomi Fry’s interview. I have Talking at Night by Claire Daverley, that recommendation was from TikTok. Rouge by Mona Awad. I loved that one a lot. I read her other book recently, Bunny. She's really sharp, and descriptive. She breaks a lot of rules, which is inspirational to me as somebody who's writing right now. God, she has a really saucy darkness to her. She's really tapped into her “dark feminine energy”. My friends have really good taste, so that Getting Lost by Annie Ernaux was just a friend rec. It's about her having an affair. It's so sad and so intense. Talking at Night is what they're calling “the new Normal People”. Sort of like a Sally Rooney vibe. Simple, profound, Irish. I stay informed via the Paris Review, the New Yorker, and the Sewanee Review. I'll look at people’s Substacks sometimes. I got Emily Mariko's newsletter for a while. She's a home cook, she's big on TikTok. I feel like podcasts are a way to stay informed for me, and a really good source of entertainment when I'm trying not to be looking at anything, like when I'm on a long walk. I'm listening to Armchair Expert, Poog, Solicited Advice, and Alison Roman's new podcast.
““The collection of essays I’m working on is more serious than my other content, and I want to start setting that precedent now so people aren’t like, “Why aren’t these essays like your videos?” The essays are a side of myself that I’ve not shown on the internet at all. It may or may not work — I have not sold this book yet, we’ll see if it even happens, but I think whether I am able to actually make this book or not, I still want to keep writing the essays and put them out in some way — maybe perform them.”
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on her comfort zone
My new couch is a very comforting piece of furniture. I've never had a comfortable couch before. This one is from Sixpenny. was tired of having a couch that just looked cool, I really wanted something that enveloped me and made me feel comfortable.
Having people over for dinner, cooking for them, also brings me comfort. I make a lamb stew from Alison Roman’s book. Either it's from Dining In, or it might be from Nothing Fancy — one of her two books. Everybody goes crazy for it. If I’m not making that, I'm usually not looking at a recipe (to try to impress people), so I'll do something raw, like a crudo. People get really excited when they get crudo somewhere other than a seafood restaurant or a Japanese restaurant. You just need a sharp knife and a good fish. I love my knife — it’s Shun, and it’s fantastic, it's engraved. Somebody told me a long time ago all you need is one good knife.
on her beauty routine and personal style
The only “supplement” I take is SuperYou from Moon Juice. My beauty routine is very minimal. Nothing happens in the morning. There's no morning skincare. I don't even splash water on my face. I don't believe in it. You wake up, you’ve still got the products on from the night before. I brush my teeth in the morning, and that's it, unless I'm going for a run or a walk on a hot day, in which case I will put on sunscreen. Versed and True Botanicals have great sunscreens. I have really dry hair, so I like Ouai hair oil. I love the Laneige and Rhode lip balms. No makeup unless I have a meeting in person, but I won't wear makeup for Zoom.
I don't leave the house during the day, so I really don't see people. I often don't change, like I wear what I wore to bed, sometimes for three days in a row.
I'm always trying, probably pretty unsuccessfully, to go for that Camille Rowe, Alexa Chung, sort of Euro Cool Girl thing. I'll call it “Rockstar’s Girlfriend.” I'm not wearing a lot of color. I like soft clothes. I like long dresses with no bra, maybe sheer, I think that's really sexy and cool. I love a boot, and a good coat. I have this coat that I wear all winter long, a camel-colored, oversized kind of duster coat that I think is really cool. I don't want to tell you because it's really embarrassing, but it's from Nasty Gal. I've definitely lied about where it's from. I’ve said that it’s vintage — absolute lie. I shop at Rouje, Realisation Par. I like Reformation, LPA, Mohawk General Store.
delaney’s restaurant strategy and favorite spots in la
I think the best way to order at a restaurant is in a group of four, so that you can get a lot of things. You want to get something from each portion of the menu, and you also want to always start with a cocktail, then move into wine, so you can get a sense of both the cocktail program and the wine list. If it's a place that has a raw bar, hit that for sure, then get a hot appetizer. I’m so invested in restaurants because I don't like to do anything else. It's as simple as that. I'm not super active, I don't like hiking, I don't like daytime activities. After five PM, the best thing you can do is go to a restaurant with your friends, then maybe go get drinks or something. You know, I don't really like to go see movies in theaters. I like to wait till they come out and watch them at home. So restaurants are my favorite pastime, and I think they’re everyone's favorite pastime, but people try to get so creative, like, “Oh, let's do pottery.” “Let’s go ziplining!” No, let's just go to a restaurant. Don't be creative.
Bar Chelou in Pasadena is newer, and it's fantastic. Marvin in West Hollywood. Bestia in the Arts District. Courage Bagels — not a “restaurant” but a place to eat. I love Jitlada, which is Thai, is in Hollywood. Found Oyster is also in Hollywood. The Tower Bar’s really fun. Lolo Wine Bar is great. I also love Canyon Coffee, El Prado Wine Bar, and Café Triste. Aside from food spots, I love The Raven Spa in Silverlake.
interview and images by clémence polès, edited by em seely-katz