Jayden Bartels Reveals A Side Nobody Sees

Jayden Bartels opens up about heartbreaks, holiday plans and the reason she says she hated herself.

- Amanda Montell

"I’m bubbly and crazy. I have so much energy,” Jayden Bartels says with an ear-to-ear smile. Then suddenly she drops the sunny expression. “But everything I do, I take very seriously. Like way too seriously.”

Judging by her sparkly social media presence and comedic TV roles, you might think 15-year-old Jayden is just a happy-go-lucky girl living under extraordinary circumstances. But the Los Angeles native swears that behind her carefree image, there’s a fiercely ambitious side her fans never see.

Take one look at the way she’s sprinted to fame in the past few years and you’ll get a sense of just how hard Jayden works. After bursting onto the scene with a viral musical.ly video in 2016 (she currently has more than 7.5 million followers on TikTok, which musical.ly merged with), Jayden has amassed some 3 million Instagram followers and 700,000 subscribers on YouTube, where she posts videos featuring everything from pranks to song performances. Not only that, she’s scored roles on Disney XD’s Walk The Prank, Nickelodeon’s Nicky, Ricky, Dicky, and Dawn and currently Disney Channel’s Coop & Cami Ask the World.

But even with all of her social media followers, Jayden hopes to be known as more than an influencer. “I want to be a well-rounded performer,” she shares.

And she’s well on her way there: Jayden—who idolizes Zendaya and would love to star in a movie like The Greatest Showman—has been taking musical theater, dance, songwriting and acting classes from the time she was 8. And even though she was born and raised in L.A., Jayden’s parents never imagined she’d pursue performing full time. Jayden’s mom is a yoga teacher, her dad fixes computers and she has two older brothers, neither of whom are in entertainment.