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On Tuesday, Brier is stepping into what she considers the next big step by releasing an audiobook, That Friend. The book is serving as her first opportunity to truly expand the character of Sabrina beyond the confines of TikTok, to give her a background, friends and family, and a storyline. The book runs about four hours, contains different “episodic” sections (which was important to Brier), and is performed by a full cast—including names as big and varied as Nicola Coughlan, Rachel Zegler, and Lukas Gage. She got many of them on board, she says, by getting to know them through social media.

“Being on the internet really teaches you how much more accessible people are than you think,” she says.

When Simon and Schuster editors first approached Brier about doing an exclusively audio project, the initial pitch was to write more of a memoir. But she went back to them, pitching instead a completely fictionalized project where she could bring character Sabrina to life. She wrote the script in the first half of 2024, giving her character a gaggle of close friends, a bankrolling yet exasperated father, and a central conflict: Sabrina’s journey trying to start an “advice” podcast—even though she may be the last person who should do so.

“It was just an amazing practice at expanding the universe of the character, bringing her down to earth a bit, making her a bit more fleshed out and grounded,” Brier says of writing the audiobook. “And starting to explore what it means to have the characters around her be much more dynamic and have journeys of their own.”

Many of the friends in the series are based on Brier’s real life-crew (her roommate both in real life and in the audiobook is a nurse named Alice). Her friends have been invaluable in creating Sabrina’s world, often filming videos for her or serving as bit players. She describes her days as constantly mining for content, observing the hilarious things her friends say and the universal truths they discuss about dating, womanhood, and making your way as a 20-something in New York.

“I always say the most fun videos to watch have often come out of an organic conversation at drinks,” she says. Sometimes, she will even stop her friends in the moment and ask them to repeat what they just said for TikTok.

“I’m like, ‘Hey guys, so actually I’m going to pay for this dinner. Can we just step outside?’ I’m just so guilty, so frantic. I’m constantly asking, ‘Can you film me really quick?’ And they’re like, okay. I think that’s really created the realism in the whole process.”

Brier isn’t capturing these moments purely to go viral or reach her goals. She’s effusive about the richness of normal or even mundane experiences among a group of women, about how every woman is a tapestry of humor and passion. Her idea to create a television show centered around a group of young, women, 20-something friends in the city gives obvious Girls or Sex in the City vibes, so I ask her: What would her version look like?



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