Joanna 'JoJo' Levesque
speaker
172 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Joanna 'JoJo' Levesque’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
How do you feel? I feel great. You should. You absolutely should. I feel relieved. I mean, you know how it is to write something and put it out. It's one thing to go through the process of writing it, which is like weird and exciting and terrifying and all this stuff. And then it unlocks another...
terrifying thing about sharing it so but it's been great the feedback from my fans and even from people that maybe didn't know who I was or didn't you know have any investment in my story it's been really nice to hear the things that stuck out to people and maybe I think the thing that excites me most is how it makes people think about their own life and maybe think about the way that they view things in the frame that they put on their experience and
Resilience and redemption and all that.
My fans are amazing. Yeah. They are amazing. They've kept me alive. They've kept me going there. I mean, Team Jojo to the end. Absolutely. Yeah. So in different seasons, they've really been like the thing that has propelled me forward and given me the courage and the confidence to even just try to keep trying, you know. So, yeah, they're everything to me.
Well, 2024 marks the 20th anniversary of when I put out my first single, my first album, in the time that changed my life forever. I was 13. And I was putting out that song, Leave Get Out, and it went number one. I was the youngest artist to have that song. chart positioning. And so I wanted to do something to make sense of and commemorate my 20 years as Jojo.
And while also kind of separating myself from Jojo and kind of when I started doing movies, I went by Joanna Jojo Levesque because I'm an only child and I'm my father's Only child. I'm a daughter. So if – the Levesque name isn't going to keep going in my family if it's not for me. So I wanted to do something to honor my dad too. He passed nine years ago and –
So it just felt like with the culmination of 20 years and also with Jeanette McCurdy being around our age and writing a book, it gave me the audacity to be like, oh, I'm not too young to write about my story. And actually, I have a lot of things to share. I think I counted myself out for a long time. I'm like, oh, I need to be at this place or I need to be at this age to share my stories.
But people like you and Jeanette and... And tons of other examples kind of gave me the balls to be like, why not me? I have a lot to share. I have a unique perspective. And I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. I've never written a book before. But damn it, I'm going to give it a shot. It was cathartic, I'm sure. Very cathartic. And I have my uncle Scott Blagdon who is a published author.
He wrote a book called Dear Life You Suck and many other books too. But he's such a good fiction writer. And when I was shopping my concept around to different publishers, he kind of gave me a crash course in – how to structure a book, about the hero's journey, about everything that he's learned as a professional writer over the years.
So between him and then the publishing house and the editor that I ended up going with, I had some hand-holding and some good teachers along the way.
Yeah, it was cool. I think that regardless of whether it did well or didn't, the fact that it became a New York Times bestseller is icing on the cake. I wasn't expecting it. You know what I mean? I know you know what I mean. Because like I was just proud of myself for – doing it. That was going to be accomplishment enough. For sure. And then anything else was icing on the cake.
The fact that my mom was okay with me sharing some of our story and all that stuff, all of that was everything I needed. And then anything else was just an added blessing.
Okay. Yeah. I mean, I asked her. I was like, there are some I asked if she wanted to see the first draft, the second draft, the third draft, fourth draft, fifth draft. She didn't want to see it. And I'm like, Ma, like, don't you want to? I interviewed her. I asked her for her memory of some things that went down because my mom was deeply depressed during like the heyday of my career.
And that was really hard for me as a only child and somebody who felt the weight of her. sadness and her struggles. And I felt really alone in that. But I wanted to find a respectful way to talk about how it affected me while also understanding that it was just as much her story as mine. So trying to find that way to do it.
And once she finally did read it, once I sent her like a more final draft of she was proud of me for finding a way to talk about it and be honest. And I think she felt that I painted her as a whole human being and not just somebody who made mistakes because I'm certainly painting myself as somebody who made mistakes in this book because I am.
I mean not really. To like a really tiny degree but I think about – There are people who look up to me, but I think about like the way that women in the particularly the early 2000s were scrutinized. I think of Britney. I think of Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton and how they were just dragged. And how how could you not? And like the media pushed – they wanted to see that.
They wanted to see how far they could push a human being. And like I'm so grateful that I didn't have that experience. Like I've got to really – my level of fame is so delicious to me because I get to just walk around with relative anonymity. But then – You know, have really a few beautiful interactions with people throughout the day. Well, they'll say really nice things to me.
And then we'll have a moment about music or impact or connection. And then I just get to like vibe and just like, and it's really, it really works for me.
Absolutely. Yeah.
Well, they're older than us though.
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