Chicago to LA: Tiktok Star Bethany Simpson on Her Future Post-grad

Bethany Simpson is a rising social media star, with nearly 580,000 Tiktok followers on her account, @bethsimps. Bethany creates acting POVs and videos about what it’s like to attend a performing arts school. She is currently in her final semester at Columbia College in Chicago, with big plans to move to Los Angeles post-grad.

As a musical theatre BFA, social media content creation hasn’t always been #1 on Bethany’s radar. In fact, a year ago she was making loose plans to move to New York City post-grad and begin auditioning for commercial theatre. Her standard day routine consisted of waking up, going to class for theatre, going to rehearsal for theatre, and on weekends, working her job at Broadway in Chicago. This was however pre-pandemic, and pre-“bethsimps.”

Once Bethany began accumulating a bit of a following on the app, she began to weigh out the options of New York and Los Angeles, both of which are drastically different from her current living situation in Chicago:

“In the end, I came to the conclusion that moving to New York meant pursuing theatre and only theatre. And that’s what I’ve been doing my whole life,” she says. “But this year I sort of realized that my life is not solely theatre, my life is lots of things. It’s also teaching– I teach elementary schoolers every summer– and I do really love marketing and social media, film acting, and dance, and writing… I didn’t want to put myself in this box. It was starting to feel like I was being forced to choose a major all over again. I think LA is the perfect place to sort of pursue everything. Find out what makes me the happiest, even if it’s not theatre.”

She goes on to admit that content creation snuck up on her, which makes it even more ironic that it’s now what she’s focused on the most:

“No one ever plans to blow up on social media, it just… happens. And it’s awesome. It’s awesome to have this platform. It’s awesome because I know that I am capable of being a positive influence on the young girls who follow me. They’ll leave all of these sweet comments about how my videos have helped them keep going but in reality, they’ve kept me going. And that’s why I’m sure this whole ‘content creation’ thing is at least worth a shot… But I’ll never stop performing. I can’t imagine a world I’m NOT actively putting art into.”

Keep up with Bethany (@bethsimps) with her socials listed below:

Tiktok | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

Business: bethanysimpsonbiz@gmail.com