.jpg)
Jake Shane knows what he likes. He arrives at a members-only club in West Hollywood, and his endearing disposition matches this breezy and balmy August afternoon. He immediately relays the degree to which Sabrina Carpenter’s Short N’ Sweet is absorbing his brain space (“‘Slim Pickins’ is actually so stuck in my head, and I can’t wait to listen to it all the way home.”). He’s craving French fries and asks about the tuna melt. “It’s not really one of my favorites,” the server hesitantly says. But Shane is undeterred: “The tuna melt is where my heart is going.” It seems nondescript — deciding what to eat for lunch — but Shane works hard to trust his intuition.
“I was very insecure about my preferences for a while,” Shane tells Teen Vogue. “I always thought sharing what I loved made me less cool. But that's not true. Sharing what you love and doing what you love — forget cool. That makes you do what you're meant to do, fall into the patterns you're meant to fall into, and meet the people you’re meant to meet.”
More than anything, Shane, 24, loves making people laugh. He offers several times that he’s in “constant need of validation,” and laughter is a uniquely reliable source of validation. On Therapuss, his wildly popular podcast that premiered last January, Shane has forced the likes of Charli XCX, Glen Powell, Reneé Rapp, Snooki, and Tate McRae into childlike giggle fits. Shane hopes to provide the same catharsis for his fans, affectionately known as Pussies, with Therapuss Live, his first-ever tour beginning on October 7.
Therapuss Live represents everything Shane has ever wanted, so he’s apprehensive about acknowledging it’s happening. Leaves intermittently fall onto our table, ironically metaphorical proof of what Shane is describing: An omnipresent superstition that his sky will fall.
Shane’s memory bank overflows with experiences coloring this fear, but none more vivid than a day at the retail store Claire’s shortly after his eighth-grade graduation. He was enjoying himself and made a conscious note of how good it felt to be accepted by a friend group. The feeling didn’t last.
“Things weren't good after that,” he says. “I remember thinking, Oh, my God, I can never be complacent in my happiness again.” His blue-green eyes widen and his lip twinges, a regular occurrence when Shane crosses a vulnerable threshold in our conversation. “I literally can’t let myself be happy, and I don’t know if people understand how debilitating that is.”
Therapuss hurtled Shane into the zeitgeist — landing him on Rolling Stone’s “25 Most Influential Creators Of 2024” and bumping his TikTok following to 3.2 million. His platform is more vast than any one person could control. That’s problematic for Shane because he was diagnosed with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder at seven years old. In his mind, if dreams come true that fast, couldn’t it all disappear just as quickly? “That’s all I think about every day,” he says.
But his current reality happening overnight is an illusion — and he could never jinx what was always meant for him.
Shane grew up in New York City’s Washington Heights neighborhood. His journalist mother and screenwriter father listened and took his ideas seriously. He loved Amy Winehouse, Lindsay Lohan (“Dream Therapuss guest beyond belief”), Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me, and Taylor Swift’s “Willow” because his mom loved them first.
While his parents accepted him when he came out as gay in fourth grade, he hid that part of himself from his peers until high school. He suppressed his visceral pull toward theater — save for the eighth-grade play and a few more during his senior year — in favor of playing whatever role necessary to fit in. He lost friends, tortured himself, and “semi-ruined” his life in pursuit of getting accepted into the University of Southern California, only to ask himself later, Why did I want this?
Still, his most authentic self won out.
“I believe Jake’s followers are experiencing something remarkably similar to what I felt seven years ago when we first met,” Julia Mervis, Shane’s best friend and longtime roommate, tells Teen Vogue. “From that very first moment in 2017, I had an instinctive sense that he was going to be someone special in my life. He has a unique ability to draw people in and uplift them, making it impossible not to adore him. The profound impact he has on his followers doesn’t surprise me at all. After all, I’ve been Jake’s biggest fan since the day we met.”
In 2021, while studying at USC, Shane started his @octopusslover8 TikTok account to post “puss reviews” of his favorite octopus dishes. “Alice [Grainge], Brett [Chody], and Julia were like, ‘If you want to take this seriously, we’ve got you,’” he says. “That changed my life.”
On February 20, 2023, Shane celebrated reaching 60,000 TikTok followers by asking his Pussies to submit prompts for him to reenact. His charming comedic spin on historical events — Bill Clinton denying his affair with Monica Lewinsky, Judas’ betrayal of Jesus, George Washington posing for the $1 bill, et al. — attracted one million followers within a month. He quit his job at a record label and later signed with UTA.
“I was delivering two skits a day, and I got very burnt out,” he says. “I remember thinking, Everyone is going to write me off. I’m terrified of people leaving me, and I’m terrified of being forgotten.”
Instead, his audience and peers wrapped their arms tighter around him. In Italy, a newlywed bride told him his videos calmed her before walking down the aisle. He can’t attend his friends’ concerts without fans embracing him. Olivia Rodrigo asked to hang out and record a “Vampire” skit for TikTok. Tate McRae asked if he’d mind introducing a song during her Madison Square Garden concert (“I was like, ‘Would I mind?!’”). Alexander 23 jumped at the chance to produce Shane’s in-progress poetry album.
“Our whole thing is it has to be funny, but this is not a joke,” Alexander 23 tells Teen Vogue. “He sends me lyric suggestions for the second verse at 2 a.m. I work with pop stars who don’t care that much.”
Back at lunch, Shane proudly plays me a video of him and Alexander 23 recording a song for the album. This morning, he revealed Snooki as his next Therapuss guest and cites it as a monumental full-circle moment. Shane had discovered her the summer after third grade when he found a Jersey Shore reunion episode while his parents cleaned out his recently deceased grandparents’ apartment.
“She was thrust into the limelight literally just for being herself, and I thought that was so cool,” he says. “I became infatuated with this person who was so unapologetically herself.”
“You realize you’re describing yourself, right?” I interrupt. And I’m far from the first person to think so.
“What I love the most about Jake is he is 100 percent unapologetically himself,” Sofia Richie Grainge later tells Teen Vogue. “He’s not pretending to be anything other than that, and I respect him so much for staying true.”
In response to me, Shane lowers his head onto his folded arms, reminiscent of a shy third-grader. “I never thought I could be that for anyone,” he says softly. “Deep down, I think that’s my fear: If I show up, are you gonna show up?”
People will show up in droves for Therapuss Live. The live show will mirror the podcast. On Therapuss, Shane “puss-scribes” earnest and hilarious advice from his fans’ “Tell Me What’s Wrong” submissions. During the “Payton’s Pregame” episode, Shane advised a Pussy named Amy that “Being left out is temporary; a traumatic experience is forever,” which he tells me is “exactly what I wish I could tell myself” as a teen. But he knows his past experiences equip him to comfort teens looking toward him now. He opens up about his body insecurities, OCD, or never having had a boyfriend in the same assured tone as when raving about his favorite albums, songs, movies, or series.
“That's my safe place — a piece of media I can rely on and be like, ‘I like this. This is my personality,’” he says. “I'm really passionate about bringing late-night television to Gen Z. That is my end goal for Therapuss.”
When asked how he’s preparing to bring Therapuss Live across North America this fall, Shane shrugs and says, “Oh, I’m not.” There is no persona to upkeep — only parts of himself to share.
“I don't know these people, but I'm going to know them by the end of this f*cking show,” he says. “I need to prove to myself that I can do it. I want to prove to people that I belong in this space. I can be a long-form entertainer. I'm here. You've let me in, and I’m not leaving.”
It’s against Jake Shane’s nature to think ahead, but after reflecting on his past eighteen months, he likes the idea of eighteen months from now.
“I hope I have a boyfriend by then,” he quips. In all seriousness, he says, “I don't want to wish for change — I hate change — but I hope I have a shift in perspective. My goalpost is authentic to what I actually care about. Sometimes, you just need to follow a little idea in your head and see where it takes you. And sometimes, it takes you where you need to be.”
