Quen Blackwell has always known how to make a moment. Years before TikTok became a launchpad for global fame, before Instagram grids were curated like art galleries, there was Vine. A place where a then-teenage Quen, under the name “quensadilla,” posted six-second snippets that made millions laugh. Her humour is dry, chaotic, at times surreal, but always sincere. It was this uncanny ability to oscillate between absurdity and vulnerability that made people watch. And they haven’t stopped watching since. But this year we will soon be seeing a new side of Quen Blackwell that we can watch, on TV.

Raised in Texas and born in Ohio, Blackwell’s adolescence unfolded on the internet. By 12, she was uploading videos. By 14, she was viral. Her fanbase followed her from Vine to YouTube to TikTok, growing exponentially along the way. Her signature confessionals, equal parts comedy and catharsis, offered the internet a kind of radical transparency, where identity was fluid, beauty was self-defined, and feelings were never filtered.

She’s also been quietly adjacent to stardom for some time. A close friend of Billie Eilish in the artist’s early fame years via Vine. Fame seemed to find her, not the other way around. And not just Quen herself that has found fame – her three cats Miso, Lewinsky and Camo Suki have become part of their mother's presence online.

Making her debut on screen in 2025, but in 2024, she made her runway debut walking in Paris fashion week at the Off White Fall Winter show.

Now, she’s embracing a new chapter, one that sees her shifting from self-made internet icon to a serious on-screen talent. This year, she joins Rachel Sennott's (of Bottoms and Shiva Baby ) upcoming HBO pilot, a darkly comic series that explores friendship, ego, and coming of age. The unnamed show stars Sennott alongside Leighton Meester, Odessa A’zion, Jordan Firstman, Miles Robbins, and True Whitaker. It's her first major acting role, but there’s an effortlessness to it, like she’s been building toward this moment all along.

And then there’s her style: an evolving canvas that blends 2000s nostalgia with something moodier, more architectural. Cat eye eyeliner, thin brows, and shredded tailoring worn with the nonchalance of someone who’s both in on the joke and too cool to care. Her Savage X Fenty campaign was only the beginning. She’s since launched her own fashion label, Riquera, a project rooted in empowerment and the kind of personal storytelling that’s defined her career from the beginning.

For someone so steeped in digital culture, Quen Blackwell is, paradoxically, deeply human. There’s a rawness to her presence, a refusal to be polished. And as she steps into the frame as an actress, a designer, and still very much a voice of her generation.

Images: Instagram