Seconds after talking to Tefi Pessoa, she feels like your best friend. That’s probably a big reason why Vox Media and The Cut are partnering with the digital creator, who has 1.9 million followers on TikTok and 406,000 followers on Instagram, on its latest podcast. Pessoa’s very first podcast, “Tefi Talks” promises to be a weekly deep dive into everything Pessoa loves from celebrities and astrology to reality TV drama and the best shows you’re missing.
“I think my favorite segment is, ‘Can I Be a Bitch for a Second’ where I just get to complain about anything and everything,” Pessoa told TheWrap in one of her first interviews about the endeavor, taking time out of her drive to Key West for a birthday weekend. “Sometimes when I tell people, they’re like, ‘Are you complaining about people?’ Um, no. I think paper straws are one of the worst things that ever happened to me.”
“Tefi Talks” will launch on YouTube, Apple and Spotify on Aug. 6. New episodes of the podcast will be available to watch and listen to on Wednesdays. Launch sponsors for the show include Dove and Macy’s.
The partnership was an organic one for Vox Media, The Cut and Pessoa. Earlier this year. Pessoa joined The Cut as a special contributor. But the creator has been working with with Vox Media team for years.
For her part, Pessoa saw her conversations with Vox Media about the podcasting space as an opportunity to expand her brand. A couple of years ago, Pessoa became more interested in longer form content beyond TikTok. “I can never seem to shut up,” she joked.
“I thought podcasts would be really perfect and another way for me to connect with my audience and people who interact with me,” Pessoa said. “There’s something about podcasting that just feels more intimate.”
She’s especially excited for “Tefi Talks” to launch so she can start building the inside jokes and callbacks that thrive in the podcasting space. It’s these little touches that make the platform feel more like a community. “You can only do that so much on Tiktok,” Pessoa said.
Pessoa recalls when she was working as a receptionist in New York and only making $21,000 a year. During that time in her life, she committed to becoming the office’s personality hire, filling her co-workers in on the latest gossip and pop culture breakdowns so she wouldn’t be fired. It’s that inner-circle feeling that she hopes to bring to “Tefi Talks.”
“I wanted to be the mayor of that office. So the podcast, I’m a receptionist, and you’re my work bestie,” Pessoa explained.
Even the look of the podcast reflects that ethos. The team spent months developing the visual language of the show, which pulls on everything from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” to seats on the MTA’s J, M and Z subway lines — the trains Pessoa took to commute into that office job. Ray Chao, senior vice president and general manager of Audio and Digital Video for Vox Media, noted that launching a podcast today means knowing it’s not just going to appear in one place. It’s going to live on podcasting platforms like Apple and Spotify, visual platforms like YouTube and short-form platforms like TikTok or Reels.
“There’s a different strategy for how we succeed and make the show stand out on everything, on all these different platforms and all these different mediums,” Chao explained.
Like the conversations Pessoa had at her receptionist’s desk all those years ago, she wants her show to be a combination of high-brow and low-brow, of silly asides and more serious deep dives. That means conducting astrology readings on whatever doomed girls’ trip is currently trending on TikTok (there’s always a new one). It also means praising Cate Blanchett’s performance in “Disclaimer” on Apple TV+.
“I feel like the girls don’t have anything to listen to on the way to work anymore,” Pessoa said. “This is just taking a more fun way into having more conversations about pop culture that aren’t toxic or about what women are wearing.”
It also presents a new challenge for Pessoa as a content creator. “She came to the table with a very clear vision and a very deep understanding of her current fan base,” Nishat Kurwa, senior vice president and executive producer for Vox Media Podcast Network, told TheWrap. “There is a flywheel of looking at what people are saying and consuming in the short form, and then using that as cues to feed back into the show as we develop it out and being really responsive to what her core fan base likes about this new format. That is crucially important for a creator who is evolving into producing a full weekly podcast: being really attentive to what the audience is coming for.”
“Tefi Talks” will also give Pessoa more support than she usually receives. In addition to Kurwa, who serves as an EP on the show, the podcast team includes a writer who has worked with Pessoa for a long time and understands her voice as well as a video editor and the Vox Media production team.
“It’s going to be really interesting for her, who has for so long been a solo operator and been so successful at it, to have this experienced collective around her helping to build out the creative vision and take it further,” Kurwa said.
For Vox Media, “Tefi Talks” fits into the podcasting network’s goal to be the home of podcasts led by some of the most influential and authoritative hosts in their respective industries. That started with the company’s investment in podcasts from its editorial team, of which one of the best known is Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway’s “Pivot.” But over the years, the company has been investing in external talents as well as members of its own team, leading to projects like “Unlocking Us with Brené Brown,” “The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway” and “Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast” hosted by Marques Brownlee.
“A lot of really notable voices aren’t going to work as journalists for a publication, so we started expanding our network with voices like that,” Chao said. “We want to build this network of top, influential shows across all of the content categories, not just news and politics or business and tech.”
But Pessoa has loftier goals for her talk show. She reflects on Britney Spears and the #FreeBritney moment, a social media feat that transformed a widely mocked pop culture icon into a movement that led to Spears being released from her conservatorship.
“I’m really excited for this podcast to maybe change the way we talk about strangers we don’t know. If we can change the way we talk about people, maybe we can change the way we talk about ourselves,” Pessoa said before adding, “Yeah, that’s a big ask of a podcast.”
