Viral star Grace Helbig unpacks life, laughter and a breast cancer battle
From viral videos to vulnerable truths, YouTube sensation Grace Helbig is swapping screens for the stage this August, making her hotly anticipated Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut with Let Me Get This Off My Chest, a funny, moving and unflinchingly honest account of her breast cancer journey.
With over 2.5 million YouTube subscribers and 1.3 million followers on Instagram, Grace is no stranger to an audience, but this time, it’s personal. Known for her razor-sharp wit and awkward charm, the US comedian has spent over 16 years building a career online, fronting the award-winning series DailyGrace, selling out live shows, co-hosting hit podcast This Might Get Weird, and even hosting her own talk show on E!
But behind the curated chaos of internet stardom, Grace hit burnout. She’d been creating five videos a week for years, only to realise she no longer recognised herself without the screen persona. So she hit pause, enrolled in graduate school to study psychology, and took a deep dive into Jungian theory and the Hero’s Journey, not realising her own epic battle was just around the corner.
Just a week after graduating, Grace was diagnosed with triple-positive breast cancer. What followed was a crash course in chemo, biopsies, surgeries, and learning to live in a body she no longer recognised. For someone who’d built a career on self-deprecating jokes and camera-friendly content, suddenly she found herself on a healing journey filled with imposter syndrome, existential fear… and surprising moments of joy.
“I was an indoor kid who edited videos for a living, not built for needles or nausea,” she says. “But somehow, being a YouTuber kind of prepared me for cancer. The internet taught me how to sit in discomfort. And how to laugh through it.”
Now in remission, Grace is taking to the stage with the kind of frank, hilarious and heartfelt storytelling that’s won her legions of fans. In Let Me Get This Off My Chest, she explores everything from sick-day silver linings and body hair to existential dread and emotional carte blanche , AKA playing the cancer card.
Having interviewed everyone from Chelsea Handler to The Rock, and penned two New York Times bestsellers (Grace’s Guide and Grace & Style), Grace is now embracing live performance with the same openness and comic precision that made her a household name online.
This is a show about loss, identity, recovery, and the weirdness of getting everything you wanted, only to find yourself missing the days you didn’t have to pretend.