YouTube sensation Todrick Hall was obsessed with Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” when he was a kid.
“Shocker,” he joked with about 300 people in the HUB-Robeson student union building at Penn State, University Park, who gathered Oct. 12 to celebrate National Coming Out Week. The event was sponsored in part by the university’s LGBTQA Student Resource Center.
“As this story goes on, you’ll just get to see more and more how gay I actually am,” he said.
One day, Hall tied his legs together and wrapped a red towel around his head. He picked up a fork — reminiscent of one of Ariel’s “thingamabobs” from the movie — and jumped into some water. He almost drowned. Hall’s mother had to jump in and save him. Paramedics were called.
“But guess what?” Hall said. “I believed that I was Ariel. I was under the sea, baby. I was killing it.”
Hall, known for his particular brand of ratchet camp in his viral music videos, shared his coming-out process with students, including in a private meeting earlier in the day with LGBT student groups on campus. He described his artistic career in eight tips that he said could be summed up in one acronym: BEYONCE.
That stands for believe, entrepreneurship, yasss (the reaction you should have when you think of an idea worth pursuing, he said), own your brand, network naturally, challenge yourself and evolve.
Hall boasts over a million followers on social media and has a quarter-billion views and counting on his YouTube videos, with fan favorites like “Twerking in the Rain” and “Cinderonce.” Hall also choreographed the music video for Beyoncé’s “Blow.”
Students, LGBT and otherwise, started lining up to see Hall speak four hours before his event was slated to begin. His biggest fans call themselves Toddlerz. As they took their seats in the auditorium, almost all had their phones in their laps and open to the camera apps, ready and waiting for Hall to take the stage.
Hall’s latest video, “Hocus Broke-us,” a parody of the Disney movie “Hocus Pocus,” started trending on Facebook in the moments before his show began.
Most people got to know Hall as a contestant on the ninth season of “American Idol” in 2010. He made it to the semifinals, but didn’t win.
“When I was on ‘American Idol,’ I was so nervous that people were going to not vote for me because they might think that I was gay,” Hall said in a video message while he changed costumes in the middle of the show. “Little did I know, everybody already knew that I was gay. I was wondering how I was going to come out of the closet and then realized that my house was built with no closet doors.”
Hall said he realized that people could tell when you’re not being authentic. He decided to embrace his tastes on YouTube and can often be seen wearing bedazzled heels and colorful dresses.
“I’m not afraid now to go and be adventurous and think outside the box and present Todrick 100 percent,” he said.
“Ever since I started doing that, I’ve never been happier,” he added. “I’ve never been living life to the fullest this much, living every single day and making it count. I’ve never been more successful as an artist and as a businessman.”
In addition to speaking with the audience, Hall performed several originally choreographed numbers and invited half a dozen students on stage to dance with him. He recorded a video message on one woman’s phone to wish her girlfriend a happy 16-month anniversary.
During a question-and-answer session, Hall responded to a question about explaining the gay community to those outside of it.
“All you can do is give people the knowledge and hope and pray that they accept it, and not get defensive,” he said. “If someone loves you, I think they will take the journey and try their hardest to think outside the box and try to think of things in a way where they can understand where you’re coming from.”
“That’s the best you can do,” he added, “just try to educate people as much as you can and try to be a part of the solution of how we’re going to change it in the future.”
Hall also shared plans for his tour next summer, which will have a “Wizard of Oz” theme. He said the tour is expected to stop in Philadelphia and the crowd, which included many of the city’s natives, went wild.
“Philly is the best city that we go to,” Hall said. “They are always so turnt up. They know every word from every song.”