YouTube star Grace Helbig on how surviving breast cancer changed her approach to online comedy

Way back in the social media stone age, 2007 or so, a comedian named Grace Helbig started making videos in her apartment and posting them to a new-fangled social media site called YouTube.

As hard as it may be to believe, back then, there wasn’t much else like it on the internet. Grace played a kind of exaggerated version of herself in the videos — a sort of fumbling, over-eager 20-something trying and failing to figure out adulthood. While she didn’t necessarily invent vlogging, before long, she was one of the online creators who was synonymous with it. She built a following of over 2 million subscribers, got her own TV show and published bestselling books.

About two years ago, she was starting to feel burned out by the daily grind of mining her life for content. But just as she was starting to spend less of her life online, life threw her a curveball. Grace was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Instead of withdrawing from the internet, she decided to re-engage with it in a different way. She vlogged about her diagnosis and treatment, bringing viewers into her chemotherapy sessions, and speaking frankly about the nausea, weakness and emotional turmoil of recovery. Movingly, she shared the video of herself ringing a ceremonial bell at the conclusion of her radiation treatment, and then going to Cheesecake Factory for a celebratory dinner with her husband.

These days, Helbig is feeling much better, and she’s now on tour with a show about her cancer journey called "Let Me Get This Off My Chest." The show comes to Phoenix on Thursday, and host Sam Dingman caught up with her recently to talk about the evolution of her online and stage personas.

Full conversation

GRACE HELBIG: There is such an emphasis in content creation on engagement of like, within the first three seconds, do something very jarring that gets people's attention, or rage bait or something. And I've been trying to think about for myself the impact of the content, if that has meaning for people, that's more valuable to me than the virality of the content.

And I'm not looking for a million views on a vlog about getting a lump back to me. I'm looking to show my experience so that people in the future that are going through it, or know someone going through it might be comforted by what they've seen me do or not do, and be able to have a better experience themselves.

SAM DINGMAN: Yeah, you know, I have to say, Grace, this makes me think of something that you said to me once a long time ago, before your diagnosis, and that I have not been able to get out of my head since then. You said,

HELBIG: Oh no.

DINGMAN: No, it was a great thing. It's a beautiful thing. But you were talking about living your life on the internet, and that there was this important thing you wanted people to keep in mind, which was that things like YouTube and Instagram and TikTok and Snapchat and all these things are called platforms for a reason, that they're supposed to support you. You're not supposed to support them.

And it was so wise, and I have really reframed my entire sense of understanding of social media.

HELBIG: Can't believe I said that.

DINGMAN: Well, it just strikes me, as you said that to me before you had this diagnosis, and it's almost like you spoke into being this life experience that you are now going through that affirms that wisdom in a way.

HELBIG: Yeah, I just felt this weird compulsion to be like I have to share this with people. The thought crossed my mind of I can keep this all offline for myself and maintain my privacy around this diagnosis, but I just felt so compelled to share something so real, and it benefited me two ways that I didn't feel so alone going through the experience of it, and I gleaned so much invaluable information from viewers that messaged me about like tips and tricks and things to get and ways to combat side effects that I would probably not have found out for myself otherwise, and I felt very supported. I've never used YouTube like this before. This feels like a really great way to use this. This is incredible.

DINGMAN: Right, imagine it being a public good. 

HELBIG: I know! I was like, man, people should use this for good. More often it feels really good to do that.

DINGMAN: Yeah, OK. Well, that makes me want to ask you then obviously we're talking today, because you're bringing your live show, based on all of this, to Phoenix. Talk a little bit about the creative decision to take the stories that you were telling off of YouTube and onto a stage and in front of an audience and to make it part of a coherent show. What, what was the impulse to do that? And how has it been for you? 

HELBIG: So this is a chronicle of some of the best and worst times that I had during my breast cancer experience and how my long standing experience as a social media influencer, for lack of a better word.

DINGMAN: If anyone has earned it, Grace, it's you.

HELBIG: Creator, how that sort of unexpectedly helped and showed up in ways that I wasn't prepared for throughout the experience. So I think there's a lot of sincerity in this show that might not translate as sincerely in a YouTube video or an Instagram reel or something like that. So I think there is more of an ability to have emotional peaks and valleys that I don't know would be as impactful in video form.

DINGMAN: Do you like that as a performer? Because I know this is something that you've thought a lot about.

HELBIG: Oh my god! I'm like, I have to emotionally prepare for it. That's the work I haven't entirely done. So you know, being sick takes so much of your freedom away that as soon as I got it back, I was like, get me out there. All I want to do is make people feel good if I can, because that's all I wanted people to do for me.

DINGMAN: But does it? Does it make you feel good to make other people feel good about it? Because I have to say one of the most moving things that I heard you say in all the videos you made about this, and there were many, but you were talking about coming out of treatment, and that all of a sudden you were presented with this vast amount of space to breathe, and that you get stuck in that moment between, oh my god, I can finally go out and engage with people. You know, actually really connect. And also, at the same time, I just want to melt into my couch and not do anything. 

HELBIG: Yeah, and a lot of people had kind of quietly and subtly warned me that one of the harder times is post-treatment, and that a lot of people don't really talk too much about that open space that happens after treatment, and that time that it takes to learn what your new body feels like and to trust it and to trust the world with your body in it, and to really feel like you have autonomy again, and that is a very bizarre and kind of nonlinear sort of path to get yourself back onto.

And like, I'm an introverted people pleaser kind of person, and so the internet was like this perfect cross section of all of my interests. Like I got to entertain people from the privacy of my own home, and then when I got feedback that the audience was also introverted, and that this space was safe for them as well. And then suddenly we're all not alone, because we all have this shared sort of life experience or emotional sort of dysregulation that we're all trying to figure out.

And the same thing with being sick is such an isolating experience, and to be able to put it online and have such feedback from people that are going through the exact same thing, or had or knew people that were was so helpful.

DINGMAN: Can I ask you about that introvert element of your personality, and because something that you also spoke about in that, that same conversation where you dropped the knowledge about platforms is you were also talking about way back when you first started performing, doing improvised comedy on stage in New York, a sense of before those shows getting so anxious that you would like physically shake?

HELBIG: There is this hope when you get, like, a diagnosis like that, that you're like, "OK, well, I guess the good part of this is that I'm gonna come out on the other side and I'm gonna be like, screw it. I can do anything. Nothing phases me. I'm not scared of anything because I almost died. So what do I have to lose?"

And that's not entirely true. And I remember finishing treatment and it being like, you ring the bell and then you're like, "ta da, I did it. Oh, no. What do I do now?"

DINGMAN: Still me?

HELBIG: I'm still in this weird new body, OK. And so I will absolutely be nervous, but it is a nervousness that is absolutely fueled by excitement and eagerness.

DINGMAN: Yeah, yeah. Well, and if the anxiety is not going to go away, the source of the anxiety shifting from fear to eagerness, that sounds like progress to me. 

HELBIG: Win, win! I’ll take it.