Brooklyn Van Zandt Was Born for the Spotlight. Now She’s Taking Control of It.

Of all the misconceptions an 18-year-old child model turned musician could rack up, Brooklyn Van Zandt’s is that she’s too nice. Too happy. She was already smiling for the cameras, posing in modeling shoots, and earning paychecks before she took her first steps. Before she could even say the words “Thank you,” for said paycheck, and it would probably be her first impulse because she’s uncommonly polite and effusive. This quality of hers is so consistent and innate to her being that people who first meet her think it’s a facade.

An Unexpected Opportunity

Van Zandt’s bubbliness was both a pro and a con during her time on The Debut: Dream Academy, a 12-week competition show created by HYBE and Geffen Records, two major labels known for managing superstars like BTS and Olivia Rodrigo. A HYBE rep once described Dream Academy as an “experiment” — an opportunity for talented young people to be members of a “fabulous” girl band, based on K-pop methodology, but operated in the United States. Think Making the Band meets The X Factor.

Then 16 years old, Van Zandt auditioned for the show after one of its casting agents reached out to her on Instagram. At that point, she had thousands of followers across social media, where she often posted videos of herself singing.

“I was questioning it at first,” she says, speaking over Zoom from her apartment in Los Angeles on a sunny Tuesday afternoon. “My whole life, I wanted to be a solo artist, but I’m very open-minded and religious, too. I think our paths are laid out for us. Sometimes, it’s unexpected.”

Regardless of what that path might look like, Van Zandt knew one thing — she wanted to sing. “I thought, I don’t care what it is as long as I can get closer to that,” she says, now on the heels of releasing her debut album.

Two months after casting agents contacted her, Van Zandt submitted an audition video of herself covering Dua Lipa’s electro-pop smash “Don’t Start Now.” Her tape was selected from nearly 120,000 submissions by teenage girls around the globe. She then made it to the second round of auditions, where she rapped to Saweetie’s sugary pop-rap anthem “Best Friend.” 

“I’m not a rapper. I was just extra optimistic,” Van Zandt says with a chuckle. “I was thinking, ‘I’m going to do everything I possibly can for them to continue watching me and being interested.’”

As she speaks, my eyes zip toward her bedroom walls—one boasts a collage of pink photographs taped sporadically above her bed. The other features a plethora of music posters organized by no specific genre: Taylor Swift next to Nirvana and SZA. At the top right, the “Rap God” himself, Eminem, covers the top row.

“I was literally praying whenever they released the [Dream Academy] documentary, ‘Please don’t include it,’” Van Zandt says of the posters, shaking her head. “It was so bad.” Still, the audition received another yes, one that required her to pack up her life in Mansfield, Texas, and meet 19 other girls waiting in California. Only six of them would make it into the final group, later announced as KATSEYE.

Brooklyn Van Zandt and fellow “The Debut: Dream Academy” contestants. [Photo Credit: HYBE America]

Van Zandt’s upcoming album, due this summer, is a continuation of her journey toward self-discovery and what she calls her “spiritual awakening.” She describes the six-track EP as her most passionate project yet. “It’s almost like a form of alchemy  —  transmuting that negativity, every sad feeling, and bad stuff into music,” she says. “How I see it is these things and feelings that happen to you are living inside of you. And when you have something — for me, it’s music — you’re taking those feelings and putting them into the song, and now it’s living there. You give it a home.” She adds, “But if you never take these feelings and give them a home, they’re gonna stay living inside of you. That’s music for me.”

The EP is largely experimental pop, exploring the idea of escapism and perfection. Fans — some of whom first met Van Zandt through her smiley, wide-eyed introduction on Dream Academy — can expect a darker sound than her earlier work. “It’s me creating this fantasy world for myself so that I can cope with reality and everything that’s happened in my life,” she says. “Behind the scenes, circumstances are not always as pretty as you think.”

She’s so far teased three songs: “High,” “Breathe,” and “Eaten By Flowers.” Unlike her post-Dream Academy trip back to Texas in 2023, Van Zandt has grown to appreciate her own contradictions. “To the core, I’m a very bubbly, positive person. But I do know these other parts of me exist — the angry version, the depressed version, the ‘I hate life’ version,” she says. “This EP is exploring all of them and giving a little bit of love to them, but also questioning these versions of myself and asking, ‘Which one’s the real one?’”

One of the trickiest aspects of participating in a competition show is that the people who are best able to understand the colossal weight on your shoulders are also your competitors. The same girls you cry happy tears with at night are the ones you try to outscore in the morning. A month into the live show, producers asked contestants to explain why they have what it takes to be a star. Van Zandt cited her “underlying passion” for music as the force keeping her upright, saying that without it, the years spent pressing towards your dreams are bound to leave you burnt out. 

Immediately after, judges asked each candidate to choose which of their fellow contestants they wanted in the group alongside them, and thus, which of their friends they would cast out. The show revealed the number of votes each girl received — including those who received none — moments before the second round of eliminations, as the girls sat holding each other’s hands with watery eyes.

Brooklyn Van Zandt as a child with her guitar. [Photo Credit: Brooklyn Van Zandt]

Always Dreaming

Van Zandt mastered the act of being on for the cameras at 6 months old when she was scouted in her car seat at a Texas mall. In 2006, she signed with the Dallas-based Kim Dawson Agency. Since then, the tapes haven’t stopped rolling. She secured deals with brands like JCPenney, Ralph Lauren, and Nike before landing an international advertising campaign, which elevated her to supermodel status before age 5.

“She was always full of energy,” says her mother, Misti Van Zandt. “You’d go into an audition, and there would be about five toddlers there because you never knew who would actually go through with the shoot, or get scared, or cry. Brooklyn was always picked because she would stand in her little spot and smile. She was probably working twice a week for different department stores.” Once her daughter learned to read, she expressed an interest in acting. “Her friends would be having birthday parties or sleepovers, and she would go and sign up for acting classes. She wanted to do workshops and learn the scripts. She’s just — she’s built differently.” 

Misti remembers cleaning Van Zandt’s childhood bedroom and finding folded notes stashed under her pillow. “She would write out little manifestations: ‘I will be a singer.’ ‘I will move to California,’” Misti recalls. At the time, Van Zandt went to her parents with all sorts of goals, including becoming the first female president and competing in the Olympics. She never grew out of it. To this day, a crayon scribbling of a girl performing in front of a sea of people remains framed on her bedroom wall. She drew it at 9 years old but keeps it in eye-view to remind her that it’s always been her dream. 

A drawing by Brooklyn Vandt, created when she was nine years old. [Photo Credit: Brooklyn Van Zandt]

While having eyes on you certainly has its perks — financial security, travel, career opportunities — Van Zandt says it also made her extremely self-aware from a young age. Her job prospects depended on her image and likeness, often leading her to “critique every little thing” about herself, she says.

“When you are in front of a camera or, you know, being perceived so much, you kind of put on a show a little bit,” she explains. “And when you’re living in that state for so long, you start forgetting who you are when you turn that switch off.”

The Tape Never Stops Rolling

In addition to the survival show, which premiered live on YouTube in 2023, a second documentary was being filmed behind closed doors: Pop Star Academy. The eight-episode Netflix series offers audiences a look into the training, friendships, and hardships contestants endured throughout the competition. In it, Van Zandt, who spent 13 months sharpening her performance skills in L.A. before the show premiered, was featured alongside 19 other girls preparing for a future that wasn’t guaranteed.

“Since it was a competition, even if they weren’t filming, I still had to be on, and that was for 13 months straight,” she says. “I had times when I could tap out and just be a kid in school. But with Pop Star Academy, it’s like every day was being on.” 

She tells me she’s not sure if she can disclose her daily training hours at that time. Some K-pop trainees reportedly spent more than 12 hours a day while anticipating their debut. “It was a whole other level of physical strain than I’d ever experienced,” she says. While preparing for the show, she was also completing her online GED, which began at Mansfield’s Legacy High School. “Any day we [Dream Academy contestants] had off, we’d go to the beach,” she says. “There were a few nights I remember staying up really late doing school and having to get up at 7 a.m. the next morning. It was definitely exhausting, but worth it.” When she graduated just before the show premiered, it was “a massive weight” off her shoulders.

Throughout the competition’s three main categories — “showcase,” “team,” and “artistry” — the show also evaluated contestants on their improvement in areas like dance, vocal ability, and star quality. But what is the definition of star quality? No one really knows. In the series, it’s spoken of like a golden ticket you were born with, a one-way pass to stardom because of the aura you emit. Van Zandt says every person on this planet has star quality. It’s just a matter of whether it’s activated or not.

“I see passion, desire, and dreams as a flame that you light up inside of yourself,” she says. “And when you’re doing something that you love, that flame is lit inside of you. Everyone can see it. People who have that ‘star quality’ are just doing what they are passionate about and what they’re meant to do.”

After the first round of the competition, candidates were split into subgroups tasked with singing and dancing to songs by iconic female artists like Billie Eilish, LE SSERAFIM, and the Spice Girls. Jay Ihn, HYBE’s Head of Creative Production, said in an interview at the time, “We wanted each performance to show an improvement in quality with each passing mission, ultimately reaching the quality level of a stand-alone production.”

Even if a contestant like Van Zandt had little to no dance experience when they auditioned, they were expected to reach that desired level through intense training. Shortly after the candidates returned from a trip to South Korea for mission two, Van Zandt was among four contestants eliminated from the competition.

“I slept for like two days straight the day I got back from Korea because I was just exhausted,” she says. “My mom woke me up and was like, ‘I thought you might have been dead because you literally were not moving.’”

That week, Van Zandt flew back to Texas, saying she “needed her people.” Those few weeks spent in her hometown remain a blur. “I was constantly being told how to do things better — how to look, dance, sing,” she says. “And when you’re told all of these things and then suddenly you’re not, it’s like, okay, ‘Who am I? What do I do? No one’s telling me what to do anymore. So it’s kind of like an identity crisis moment.”

Brooklyn Van Zandt singing on stage. [Photo Credit: Brooklyn Van Zandt]

The free hours in Texas allowed Van Zandt to fully experience the grief of losing her grandmother, who passed away during the first week of the competition. Van Zandt had grown up with her grandmother watching her, two to three days a week. “She kind of hid that away and didn’t process that grief,” says Misti. “I think it really hit her after she got out of the program and had time to think.”

A lot had changed in the year Van Zandt was gone. Many of her old high school friends were busy with the start of their senior year, and others were no longer speaking to her, a side effect of her being required to keep her training in L.A. a secret until the show aired.

“Leaving Texas so abruptly and not being able to tell anyone what it was really for,” she remembers. “I lost so many people. And then, going M.I.A. for literally 13 months, I lost even more friends. It was really hard coming out of the whole process, like, somebody you thought was your best friend, not speaking to you anymore.”

Van Zandt also felt what she calls a “weird amount” of pressure to return to the limelight on social media to kickstart her solo career. After all, it’s what she’d been doing for nearly the past decade. “I was like, ‘I need to start posting on social media again or I’m gonna lose all my engagement and my people.’ I did that a lot,” she says. “But then I stopped because I was like, ‘I’m not ready to be posting every day again.’ I took a lot of little breaks and leaned into how I felt in the moment.”

When she was ready to step back into the spotlight, she came back swinging.

Finding the Dream

After a year in Los Angeles, she and her family decided it made the most sense to remain on the West Coast. While the family’s original cross-country move was sudden, her mom always figured it would happen. 

Brooklyn Van Zandt with an electric guitar. [Photo Credit: Drew Doyon]

“When I first met Brooklyn, she struck me as the quintessential girl next door with a dash of flower power,” says MacCalla. “Then she opened her mouth to sing. And her voice revealed this beautiful, sweet tone layered with character and genuine passion. It was clear from that moment that she had something special. Over time, she’s only proven how deep and multifaceted her artistry truly is.”

On “Selfish,” Van Zandt reintroduces herself, casting aside her happy-go-lucky persona with a new revelation: “Branded happy/Feelin’ crappy/This shit’s getting old/Gotten way to good/At always,” she sings. “Doing what I’m told/I wanna burn every page/Time I start making the plays.”

In a YouTube video discussing the meaning behind the song, Van Zandt opened up about how she’d been a people pleaser her whole life, often letting “people walk all over” her. The song, she says, is a way of exploring the positive aspects of being selfish and taking your power back.

“Her songwriting is emotional and sincere. She’s not afraid to be vulnerable, which gives her work a real sense of honesty and relatability,” says MacCalla.

A New Chapter

Van Zandt has a circle of support around her, built after months of struggling to find friends following her year-long dedication to Dream Academy. “For the first few months, it was impossible to meet friends in L.A., especially at 18,” she says. “But now I have my people and a few best friends in Texas, too. It’s nice because they knew who I was before anything. They befriended me ’cause they like me. Not, you know, this idea of me.”

Alongside her friendships, her family and Christian faith are the core of her. Despite her forthcoming EP’s exploration into the fantasy worlds of her mind, Van Zandt hopes listeners find their own truths within the material. “There are a couple of fun, flirty songs,” she says. “I want people to think about the person they’re crushing on — that’s one kind of escape feeling.” 

A personal Polaroid of Brooklyn Van Zandt. [Photo credit: Brooklyn Van Zandt]

“Going into Dream Academy, I set a goal for myself: ‘I never want to miss a rehearsal,’” she says. “I was surprised at how much I was able to endure. Pushing through on those days where it felt like there was literally no way gave me so much confidence mentally.” She laughs at the idea. “I thought, ‘If I can do this, I can do anything.’”