Welcome back to our occasional feature for swimfanning over our celebrity faves! This installment has, not one, but TWO new fake girlfriends for y’all! These two queens are smart, funny, and just plain DOPE.
Biographical Details
Fake Girlfriend Names: Phoebe ??? Robinson and Jessica Renee Williams
Phoebe: A lack of concrete facts is going to be a recurring element for Phoebe’s profile, since most of the info isn’t readily available (i.e., the first Google hit or on Wiki), and actual serious digging beyond that seems, y’know, intrusive. Anyway, Phoebe shares the first name of a famous fictional Friend, and the last name of a famous fictional Simon & Garfunkel song subject.
Jessica: Jessica was, like, the girl name of the ’80s and the ’90s (blame the Wakefields?). And with Williams being a pretty common last name, there are undoubtedly many Jessica Williamses that are simultaneously proud of having such a cool name twin and tired of having that constantly pointed out to them.
Date of Birth: c. 1984 and July 31, 1989
Phoebe: I vaguely estimated Phoebe’s birth year from recent episodes of 2 Dope Queens; she’s currently 31 — and enjoying the shizz out of her no-fucks-left-to-give thirties — and is both 5 years older than Jessica and 7 years younger than Michael Fassbender (born April 2nd, 1977). Algebra saves the day!
Jessica: I’m always extra in awe of impressive and talented people that are younger me; the contextual timeframe of having lived those amount of years makes their accomplishments that much more amazing to me. And Jessica proves that age and wisdom don’t always have to go hand in hand.
Place of Birth: ??? and Los Angeles, CA
Phoebe: Again from podcast clues, Phoebe is a originally from the Midwest, and one of many famous people who have once called Cleveland, OH home. Most of what little I know about Cleveland has to do with sports, but Drew Carey has repeatedly insisted that it rocks, and what reason would he have to lie to me?
Jessica: Like Phoebe, Jessica has Midwest roots through her parents, but she herself was born and raised in L.A. (Just like our previous New Fake Girlfriend! Omg, I know L.A. is a big-assed place, but could you just imagine if young Jessica Williams ever crossed paths with young Rachel Bloom?!)
Educational Background: ??? and California State University, Long Beach
Phoebe: I can’t, for the life of me, remember if Phoebe ever mentioned where she went to school. But wherever it was, it was during that time that Phoebe discovered Daria, a show that would become very near and dear to her, later serving as inspiration for the name of her blog.
Jessica: From the brief Wiki rundown of CSULB, this place sounds cool AF. It’s super diverse, it’s the largest publicly funded art school west of Mississippi, and it has one of the lowest in-state student fees in the U.S. And I haven’t even gotten to all the cool people among its alumni: filmmaker Steven Spielberg, X-Files creator Chris Carter, Olympian Misty May-Treanor, and, of course, professional badass Jessica Williams.
Where You Have Seen Them:
Phoebe currently writes for Vulture and Vanity Fair, predominantly as a TV recapper for both. She also performs as a stand-up comic, as seen below on Late Night with Seth Meyers.
Phoebe also headlines Woke Bae, a Youtube series for Refinery29 that’s like a video version of Your New Fake Boyfriend (i.e., YESSSSSS).
Jessica has been crushing it as a Daily Show correspondent since 2012. (Although mayyyybe/definitely let’s let her determine the course of her own career, OK? Regardless of whatever Hot Tub Time Machine 2 may have foretold.)
Together, Phoebe and Jessica recently launched the live comedy show that they host in Brooklyn as a podcast with the same name called 2 Dope Queens. (9 episodes have been released so far, and they’ve all been great.)
Where You’ll See Them Next:
More episodes of 2 Dope Queens! Phoebe and Jessica also sometimes take their show on the road, so some of y’all lucky ducks might even be able to catch them IRL.
This fall, Phoebe will be releasing a book of essays, You Can’t Touch My Hair And Other Things I Still Have to Explain (October 4th) — with a foreward from Jessica, naturally.
And further down the pipeline is a potential scripted show from Jessica and a Broad City writer, thanks to a development deal she recently inked with Comedy Central. WHEN CAN OUR EYEBALLS PEEP THIS?!?!
Why You’ll Adore Them:
Do you like intelligent, hilarious women with candid and insightful commentary on pop culture, politics, race, and basically everything and anything? (Tokenism? Billy Joel? Butt stuff? Yep, yep, yep.) Then you’ll love the glimpses into Phoebe and Jessica’s friendship through their electric rapport on 2 Dope Queens. (Real talk: I’m also relating so hard to Phoebe’s new singlehood and her entry into the “garbage dump” that is Tinder/online dating.)
And even though I could listen to these two shoot the shizz all day long, they actually share the stage and their show with guest comedians, consciously ensuring that “people of color are represented and people from different orientations are represented”. (Heart eyes emoji, anyone?)
Last but certainly not least — because, seriously, this post could have just been transcripts upon transcripts of their convos — Phoebe and Jessica’s pop culture interests would fit right in here at FYA. Among Jessica’s faves, new and old, are Buffy and UnREAL. And here she is, with some YA shout-outs on The Daily Show.
In addition to the aforementioned Daria fangirling, Phoebe is a Bono devotee — an obsession that FYA HQ knows all too well!
So what are you waiting for? Make Phoebe Robinson and Jessica Williams your fab and fierce fake friends today!
Long live 2 Dope Queens, y’all!
