How “Apple” dance creator Kelley Heyer launched the song of the summer
Charli XCX even slid into the actor’s DMs.
Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.
No I won’t do the “Apple” dance for Embedded subscribers…haha unless…—Kate
We’re having a brat summer in a way we never could have anticipated (see: this tweet), but perhaps no one has been more swept up in it than Kelley Heyer. On June 14, the NYC-based actor posted a dance she made up to “Apple,” an—at that point—“underappreciated” song on Charli XCX’s newest album. Now, the melody is everywhere, thanks largely in part to Heyer, and the dance went so viral that everyone from Charli to the Twisters cast has recreated it.
When I get on Zoom with Heyer, they’re in Los Angeles to film a special TikTok video (about which she’s not able to share any details). She got her start on TikTok during the pandemic, using it to stay creative during the shut-down. She posted personal style videos and other trends, including a viral video about “subway shirts,” but never her own dance. After getting in the habit of putting on Brat in the mornings and gravitating in particular towards “Apple,” Heyer couldn’t help herself. She choreographed in front of the mirror, wearing her pajamas, and the dance was born.
In this interview, Heyer and I talk about the dance’s blockbuster success, Charli sliding into her DMs, and the Kamala Harris of it all. Just know that when the Presidential nominee shows up on TikTok doing the dance, Heyer called it first.
Let’s start with the basics: walk me through the “Apple” dance.
I think all credit goes to Charli, it's all from her lyrics and all from her music. So I can go lyric by lyric. So "I think the apple's rotten right to the core," that line has a real pull and ooze. So I was like, “Ooh, that makes me just like”—have fun translating this to text. And then I was like, “What's at my core?” My heart and my pussy. And so I had one hand going across the heart and one hand sliding down. That's the core. And then right there in the beat she has an and-eight that's really fun. And then “from all the things passed down from all the apples coming before,” the song is about generational trauma, and so I pictured a little staircase and a little apple falling down the staircase. And then I was like, well my hand is by my hip already, so we'll just go hip, hip, hip, and then the hardest part is to hold for one beat. Everyone goes early, but hold one beat and then the quick and-one looks like you're putting a seatbelt on, and Charli loves to drive. And then the line, “I split the apple down symmetrical lines,” obviously you gotta split an apple. Sometimes some people do a little apple shape, some people do a heart shape. I think it's fine because the apple is the heart. And then "what I find is kind of scary," that's a classic TikTok dance move, a head shake. And then of course, another classic move and a classic Charli line, "makes me just wanna drive."
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Did the dance take off right away? What was that experience like?
When I posted my very first dance, [the “Apple” sound] was at about 200 videos. And then over the course of two weeks, it got to about 2,000 and people were tagging me and I was like, “Oh my gosh, people are doing the dance.” And then at about the two week mark, Charli, Troye [Sivan], and Terrence [O’Connor] did the dance. And I mean, it wouldn't have gone viral in the way it did if they hadn't done it at that point, because it jumped to another level. June 14th, 200 videos, July 14th, just over 100,000 videos, and now today it’s over 400,000.
Pets doing it also became a huge thing.
Pets. I've seen mascots, I've seen animations, this one gal made a sweater. People are so talented. It's just amazing.
Have you heard from Charli?
Yeah. After she did that video, she sent me a super sweet message saying how much she loved the dance and she offered me tickets to her Madison Square Garden show.
Are you gonna go??
Absolutely.
I bet she'll do the dance on stage.
That's what everyone's been saying. And I've just been seeing videos on my phone of people at the clubs in New York City or at Fire Island doing the dance. And I was like, this is crazy. You guys should invite me. I wanna go!
I know when it was originally taking off, everyone was saying you weren't getting credited properly. What are your thoughts on that?
I didn't appreciate people using my name as an excuse to be mean to other people, but I also wanted to make it clear to those people that I so appreciate the intent. Credit for anything is important, but being tagged in every single video of a TikTok dance I made was not the hill I was gonna die on. So it's really nice when people do, and if they don't, we just gotta let it go.
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Obviously there's been a brat explosion with the Kamala stuff and I feel like “Apple” is the song that reminds people of the coconut tree line. Have you seen a resurgence?
What's so funny about this is about a week and a half ago, a week before Biden dropped out, I put on my story, “I give it one week until Kamala does ‘Apple.’” Just as a joke. And then Biden dropped out and then Charli tweeted, “Kamala is Brat.” And I went, “I fear I've manifested too hard.” I think it is coming. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a video of her standing and smiling and a bunch of interns behind her doing it.
Or you're gonna get invited to do it with her. Was being an online creator something you were interested in before the pandemic?
No, I had never considered that before. I'm really enjoying the success from social media and I'm really, really proud of the work that I've put into it, but sometimes when articles will just reference me as a TikTok influencer, I'm like, no, I'm an actor. I'm really good. I'm trained and that's what I wanna do. If anything, social media was my way of being my own publicist. How do I get my face out and how do I create my own press and my own buzz? And so I put a lot of work into that and it's worked out. My end goal is to be an actor and, but everyone is a multi hyphenate these days.
Has virality opened any other doors for you with acting?
I think it opened doors adjacent. I'm actually in LA right now to film a very exciting TikTok that's gonna be really cool and will probably come out soon. If anything it's giving me opportunities to meet people, to also have, if not name recognition, then face recognition. I was walking around the day after Charli did the dance for the first time, it was Pride Weekend in New York, and it was so great 'cause everyone was like, “You're the ‘Apple’ girl.” And I was like, yeah. Absolutely I am.
You can find Kelley on her socials @kelleyheyer or playing DnD as a guest star on tabletopnotch.