That Friend Just Wrote An Audiobook

Everyone has that friend. You know, the one who hates her bestie’s boyfriend? Or the one who thinks she’s such a good friend? Not to mention, the one who has a huge crush on her dentist? On TikTok, Sabrina Brier portrays all of them and then some. She’s spent the past few years crafting a deeply delusional persona, inspired in part by her own unapologetically basic tastes. “Sometimes in life, you have to know who you are, and I am a girl who is reading romantasy and ordering things I should not be on Uber Eats,” Brier says of the parallels between her and her TikTok avatar, also named Sabrina.

Now, with the release of Brier’s debut audiobook — aptly titled That Friend — audiences will have a chance to go deeper with her now-famous persona, who’s been transformed into a (still-delulu) advice podcaster with friendship problems. (As well as f*ckboy problems, self-esteem problems, and bank account problems.)

Though Brier loosely scripts her TikToks, writing the audiobook was a very different — and very rewarding — experience. “It felt like writing a play. You can really marinate with the dialogue, get a little more comfortable, and just go off the rails,” says Brier. “I was writing sound effects, dialogue, scene breaks, episode breaks. You just have so many words!”

To bring the book to life, Brier enlisted actors like Rachel Zegler, Nicola Coughlan, and Lukas Gage to voice the other parts. And it was while overseeing the casting, writing, and directing for That Friend that Brier got a glimpse of her dream job. "I want to be a showrunner. Putting this book together — with such a big team of incredible people who had ideas that I wouldn't have thought of but then melded together — felt like showrunner training,” she explains. Luckily, she’ll soon be putting that training to good use, as Awesomeness TV is now developing the audiobook into a series. While you were busy judging, that friend made her dreams come true.

Below, Brier reflects on Sarah J. Maas, Taylor Swift, and needing to be a “shell of herself” to write.

On reading a BookTok-favorite series:

I am truly just reading romantasy right now. I've read all of [Sarah J. Maas’] A Court of Thorns and Roses. Now I'm reading Assassin's Blade from [her] Throne of Glass series. I mostly listen to them because I find it so relaxing. I feel like a kid reading Twilight again.

On the Taylor Swift album that fueled her:

[When I’m writing] the lyrics have to be ones that fade into the background, otherwise I'm going to start to think about those words and not the words in front of me. I listened to the Tortured Poets Department a lot for this, so many times that it's like I started to dissociate from the words. It just felt so atmospheric.

On “little treat” culture:

If I'm ordering breakfast from Uber Eats, which is the most unnecessary thing you can do, I'm screaming, “You just spent money on this! You're sitting down at your kitchen table with this nice little latte and pumpkin bread and you're going to write!”

On the power of being a mess:

I have to just be a shell of myself to get myself to concentrate [on writing]. I’m disheveled, I haven't brushed my teeth, I haven't left the house. I'm not the kind of person who's like, "Oh, I just went out and had lunch went on errands, and now I'm to get home at midday at 3 and be productive with writing." It has to be the center of the day, and I have to really just let myself go in every way possible.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.