Madeline Argy knows exactly who she is

Taken from the new print issue of THE FACE. Get your copy here.

Madeline Argy has never felt more like herself: more comfortable, more self-assured, more confident. Sitting at a round table in the rooftop hotel bar of One Hundred Shoreditch on an unusually muggy day in London, the 24-year-old seems tangibly at ease, fresh from a six-day trip to Los Angeles – all smiles, animated hands and red love-heart covered nails.

These days, such are the demands of her transatlantic career, she’s ​“back and forth” to LA. Nonetheless, ​“I’m so stupid and forgot that coming back is so much harder than going because you just want to sleep,” she says of her recently subsided jetlag. Dressed in a chocolate-brown Axel Arigato cardigan, a dark grey vest, light-wash jeans and Adidas Gazelles, with her hair scraped back into a low bun, sans make-up, there’s no way to describe her other than glowing. La La Land clearly agrees with her.

Of course, LA adventures are a long way from the ones that first put Madeline on the world’s For You pages. She launched her TikTok account in March 2021 and 15 months later, one of her earliest viral videos – an anecdote about a worm trapped in her sister’s leg – popped up on my phone. It was a nose-scrunchingly-gross tale, told at breakneck speed. But like the 5.7 million other people who have liked the video to date, I couldn’t stop watching. It swiftly became clear that the then-22-year-old was disinterested in churning out polished ​“get ready with me” content or the ​“clean girl” makeup tutorials her peers opted for.

Nattering about childhood memories and disastrous dates while parked up in her worn-out Vauxhall Astra; oversharing night-out stories; the odd sobering account of her sometimes debilitating anxiety – these were the refreshingly honest, slice-of-life bulletins that helped mint a bracingly new kind of influencer. Since then, even though Madeline has evolved from telling #relatable, TikTok-friendly stories in her crappy car (because, well, Hollywood came knocking), her refreshing candour and TMI videos still do big numbers – particularly right now.

To update anyone who’s anti-TikTok: a seismic shift occurred in Madeline’s life earlier this summer, when she broke up with West London rapper Central Cee. Even the aggressively offline had likely been aware of their relationship – they were basically Gen Z’s answer to Posh and Becks, and fans, stans and spectators clamoured for any glimpse of the pair.

Then, on 12^th July, five days after her 24^th birthday, it all came to a crashing, chaotic end. Madeline uploaded a five-part TikTok series in which she revealed the intricacies of their relationship troubles: a lack of communication from her ex, most painfully revealed by the fact she was completely in the dark about Cench’s alleged marketing ploy with Ice Spice, his most recent musical partner, to conjure up dating rumours. The videos both closed down the relationship and lit up the internet. To date, more than 150 million people have watched the damning fistful of clips.

It’s all still fresh for Madeline, even if, from previous experience, she knows those feelings don’t last. ​“When I had a break up in 2020, I was convinced my life was over and it wasn’t. So why would it be the next time?” For now, though, she’s focusing on her creativity, her business and her place – literal and artistic – in the world. Since launching her podcast Pretty Lonesome in October 2023, via Alex Cooper’s The Unwell Network, LA has become both a haven and a minefield for Madeline.

A life where up to 80 million people view just one of your videos and every upload is psychoanalysed… It must be exhausting. Especially when you’re currently living ​“out of seven suitcases”, according to her recent podcast confession. There are silver linings, though. While recently having dinner in London with friends, a young woman bought Madeline a cocktail and let her pet her pup. Madeline summarised the interaction on Instagram and in a now-viral TikTok: ​“Immediately she plops this black Pomeranian dog into my lap and she was like: ​‘I’ve seen what you’ve been going through online, and I just think that you deserve a drink and a cuddle with my dog.’”

Madeline let the follower know just how much that act of kindness meant to her: ​“I went up to her afterwards because I had something that I thought she would like in my car. She was like, ​‘Do you want to hang out sometime?’”

Does she make a habit of striking up friendships with strangers? ​“Obviously I’m not going to do that with every single person I meet! But she was my age. She was so sweet to me, she was very relaxed in the conversation. And it’s just like, ​‘OK, why not?’ It’s so nice. I’ve actually made a new friend.”

“When I’m in London, I feel like I understand social cues fine,” she says. But she’s still finding her footing in the land of the stars. ​“When I’m in LA, I’m like, ​‘I don’t know if I’ve correctly done this interaction with you.’ You’re thinking about it afterwards and it drains me. I can’t really word it, but I do just end up feeling a little intimidated by the social circles.”

Madeline knows all about intimidation. Growing up in West Sussex, England, where she was raised by a mother who was a survivor of Thalidomide, with a sister one year older than her, Madeline was merely trying to exist through relentless bullying in secondary school. TikTok was a way for her, like many Gen Z‑ers, to express herself from the comfort and security of her home. Quickly, unfiltered chat, storytelling and oversharing became Madeline’s online persona.

Like many of us, Madeline is a self-professed yapper (the internet’s current favourite buzzword). She’s ​“just a girl” (more internet colloquialism). And she’s a Cancer, perhaps prone to wearing her heart on her sleeve (as she said earlier this year, crying is her ​“most Cancerian trait”). It’s a combination of personal characteristics that can be difficult to manage when you have a combined 12 million followers on TikTok and Instagram. ​“Sometimes I’ll be holed up in a flat with my best friend for, like, a month,” she says with exaggerated feeling. ​“Then I’ll go out into the real world and meet, I don’t know, an influencer, and start having a genuinely heart-wrenching, deep conversation with them. And they kind of look at me like: ​‘This isn’t welcome, I don’t know you.’ I forget that not everyone has that relationship [with privacy].”

Luckily, Madeline has a tight friendship group that she credits for being brutally honest with her during the last three years, a time in which she felt like she forgot herself. ​“It was kind of like I was sleepwalking for a very long time, and I wasn’t being conscious about the company I kept,” she says earnestly. ​“And you do turn into the company that you keep. I believe that.”

When you have Madeline’s kind of reach, fan encounters, of course, aren’t unusual – and, undoubtedly, not always welcome. But occasionally they can work small but meaningful magic. ​“Sometimes I even find it comforting. If I’m feeling overwhelmed, it often snaps me out of it.”

The chatter online and IRL about Madeline’s breakup was incessant and everywhere. She spent the days after posting her videos avoiding it all by sleeping and completely shutting down. The last thing she wanted to do was talk. ​“I had been on such an adrenaline-and cortisol-driven rampage. I had been living at my friend’s, I hadn’t been home. After I did it, my body was just like…” She sighs heavily and hepuisr shoulders visibly sag. ​“Something in my body allowed me to sleep. And then it was really, really hard.

“Emotionally, I think it probably got harder for me after those videos,” she continues. ​“But just having the support of my friends, I laughed much more than I cried, and they checked in on me constantly. It was a new experience for me, actually, because usually when hard things happen in my life, I close off, and I just lock myself up in a room by myself and cut contact with everyone.”

This time, she let her friends in. ​“This is the first time I’ve ever had people remain on my case and stay with me physically the entire time,” she says. ​“I realised you can weather things with other people and it makes it easier. I know that sounds obvious. But I had never done it, so I was like, ​‘Wow.’”

The aftermath of the breakup was, understandably, hurtful for a multitude of reasons. To make matters worse, in the days that followed, Madeline found herself at the centre of yet more internet canard: some commenters thought the videos detailing her relationship’s downfall were made up as part of an elaborate PR stunt. Having endured heartbreak and snark before, Madeline is, she says, trying to rise above it. ​“The way I look at life is: the universe will give you lessons and it will repeat the same one until you learn. I had been through a situation in my life before, but that was on a much smaller scale. When I look back, the causes of the pain were that I didn’t understand why they did it to me – and I was not believed about what happened to me. That was what drove me insane.”

Unfortunately, the tale of a woman not being believed is one we know all too well, especially when said woman is in the public eye. This time around, though, Madeline was determined to control the narrative. She released another TikTok, one making light of the baseless accusations against her, lip-syncing to a viral sound of actor Tyrese Gibson having a meltdown to illustrate her annoyance. Text across the screen read: ​“Airing my dirty laundry bc I got publicly humiliated and I still can’t beat the PR allegations.” Her comments were then flooded with either further accusations or sympathy. Both were equally upsetting.

​“Do I want to see these comments about me being this victim? Or worse, [as] someone that was completely fine with it? I didn’t even know which one was worse. I just felt embarrassed that people thought I knew [what had allegedly been going on]. She continues. ​“I remember talking with my friend about it. I was like: ​‘Why does everyone think it’s PR? Is it not obvious that it’s not?’ And she was like: ​‘Mads, I think it’s just genuinely that no one can believe that he actually did that to you.’”

As we’re talking at One Hundred Shoreditch, it’s been a little over a month since the breakup went public and nuclear. But in her work at least, Madeline is trying to centre herself in a different headspace. In the 10 months since she launched Pretty Lonesome, it’s been a full-throttle journey. Much like the DNA of her original TikTok videos, the podcast has become Madeline’s space to open up about life’s peaks and troughs, like she’s on a FaceTime chat with her closest pals. ​“Sometimes, genuinely, half the stuff I say in that podcast I didn’t even know [I thought] before it came out of my mouth. It’s therapeutic, and it’s also just fun.” It’s her USP and she has a lot to say – two strong reasons why season two of the podcast is already on its way.

With that kind of cultural cut-through, not to mention her increasingly adventurous personal style, it’s no surprise that Madeline’s also become something of a phenomenon in the fashion world. POV videos on her socials show her behind the scenes at couture week in Paris, front row at a Saint Laurent show and at a Chanel cruise show in Marseille. ​“My first exposure to the fashion industry was fitting for a high-fashion brand, which is an insane jump to make,” she notes, still semi-amazed by the experience. ​“It’s been exciting to develop a new style – [before now] my day-to-day style [has stayed] very much the same, which is just jeans and a T‑shirt.”

Her enthusiasm for music is even more intense. She’s recently become enamoured with another It-girl: Chappell Roan. ​“This generation hasn’t had someone that perfectly captures people of all backgrounds so well,” Madeline says. ​“It’s head-turning music. I’m so excited for her career. And I think she’s really attractive, too.” Her love for another pop girlie runs even deeper. ​“Let me tell you something about Sabrina Carpenter: I have been her fan for so fucking long – since I was 13 years old. I genuinely feel like I’m her mother, that kind of pride of: ​‘I knew you had it!’ Finally, we’re here.”

Madeline has evening plans in East London, so we ask for the bill. ​“Don’t I know you from somewhere?” asks the server as he proffers a card machine. Madeline quickly and smartly responds: ​“I just have one of those faces.” For a second, the moment seems to have passed. Then he follows up with: ​“Aren’t you Central Cee’s girlfriend?” Madeline, completely unphased, responds back: ​“I’m his ex-girlfriend.”

Despite the world trying to pin Madeline Argy to a relationship that doesn’t – and has never – defined her, she’s firm in knowing who she is and where she’s going.

“Being attached to a man, a woman, or anyone, is my worst fear,” she says, adamantly. ​“I want people to think of me as a comfort person. I have my comfort people that I watch on YouTube, and that’s what I want to be.” The other, day she was talking with a friend about ​“who you consistently show up to be”, and Madeline realised: ​“I don’t know who I’ve shown up to be. I wouldn’t ever show up as an evil person – but how conscious have I actually been of who I am? So I just try my best to be someone that people can think of as comforting and as clever. Hopefully [people] think I’m nice and hopefully they think that sometimes I wear cool T‑shirts. That’s as much as I really give a fuck to be thought of.”

HAIR Teiji Utsumi MAKE-UP Lynski using CHANEL Fall Winter 2024 and No.1 de Chanel Body Serum in Mist SET DESIGNER Phoebe Shakespeare PRODUCER Katherine Bampton PHOTOGRAPHER’S ASSISTANTS Maxwell Tomlinson, Tamibe Bourdanne, Abena Appiah and Ashleigh Ramel STYLIST’S ASSISTANTS Hollie Williamson, Lulu Bullock, Amilia Howells and Ellie Marles MAKE-UP ASSISTANT Sasha Chudeeva SET DESIGN ASSISTANTS Emily Avery and Giorgio Santamaria PRODUCTION INTERN Jaiya Nijor RETOUCH Grain Post THANKS TO Sam at Animal Ambassadors and Cleo at Animal Direction