Mai Pham has meticulously re-created her childhood bedroom in her New York apartment — perhaps as a vehicle for periodic escapism, since she doesn’t sleep in it.
A “Don’t Bug Me” Miley Cyrus poster hangs on the door, teen heartthrobs plaster the walls, and Littlest Pet Shop figurines — the same ones she unboxed in her first YouTube video at age 7 — keep watch. The YouTuber’s vision board, complete with a mock-up of 2 million subscribers, hints at dreams she once longed to manifest. Today, she has more than 3 million. The pink room brims with fragments of her adolescence, a playful archive of the girl she used to be.
But the room I’m standing in as I interview her is not just a replica of her childhood bedroom. It is a carefully constructed set where the 22-year-old records her podcast, “MaiSpace.” Each detail is a testament to the child she once was and the room she wished she’d had. The bedroom she grew up in often felt suffocating and watched; this one is built to be the opposite, a space where she can finally share her story on her own terms. (Watch the video above.)
“I think as a child, I had a lot of sadness in me,” she tells me. “Honestly, for as long as I can remember, I was pretty depressed. But there was also a light in me — a joy, a desire to create and be a kid.”
