Glozell Green
The cinnamon challenge did it. GloZell Green had been posting to YouTube since 2008, making video interviews, song parodies and comedy about her own life, but the clip of her attempting to swallow a spoonful of cinnamon is the one that passed sixty million views and carried her name off the platform. By 2015 the channel had over four million subscribers and more than 700 million total views.
Her comic register is loud, physical and deliberately undignified, built for a medium where the thumbnail does the selling before a single word is spoken. The push-up bra video cleared twenty-five million views on exactly the same principle. She also had an early brush with the mainstream when a blog post about meeting Elijah Wood got mentioned by the actor on Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2011, which is precisely the sort of accident that converted first-generation YouTubers into public figures.
The screen credits that followed are mostly voice work in animation, where the size of her delivery is an asset rather than a problem. She is Grandma Rosiepuff in Trolls and again in Trolls Band Together, and Little Debbie in Ralph Breaks the Internet. Live action has used her more sparingly, in The Wedding Ringer, the online series Escape the Night, the 2019 All That revival and the 2024 comedy Villains Inc.
Movies (5)
TV (3)
Where to start with Glozell Green
Easiest way in: Trolls, where Grandma Rosiepuff is a good use of her, a warm, big-voiced part in a film happy to be loud. Trolls Band Together brings the character back.
Ralph Breaks the Internet is the sharper credit, because Little Debbie is a joke about internet celebrity delivered by an actual internet celebrity, and the film knows it. Watch it with that in mind and the cameo gets considerably funnier.
Live action is thinner. The Wedding Ringer is a small comic turn in a broad studio comedy, Escape the Night is the online-native one and the best fit for an audience that already follows her, and Villains Inc. is the recent oddity. The YouTube channel remains the real body of work, and none of it is film.