The Untold Truth Of Bhad Bhabie

Danielle Bregoli is here, whether you like it or not. The teenage bad gal first made her public debut during an infamous 2016 Dr. Phil episode where her mother detailed her out-of-control behavior. She allegedly stole cars, credit cards, and cash (which she used to buy a stripper pole), tried to frame her mom for heroin use by spreading powdered sugar around her bathroom counter and lying to police, and twerked around their Boynton Beach, Fla. home. At one point, her mama even called her "the Antichrist," and Bregoli uttered the notorious phrase that made her famous: "Cash me ousside! Howbow dah?"

These days, Bregoli has reinvented herself as Bhad Bhabie, proving that a viral star can become a rap sensation who climbs the Billboard charts and ignites TMZ-worthy beefs in the same breathe, and she doesn't even have a face tattoo ... yet. Behind the scenes, the controversial star is less guarded. To those who know her beyond Dr. Phil, her bombastic confidence sometimes does waver and she still occasionally shares a bed with her mother for comfort. This is the untold truth of Bhad Bhabie.

Bregoli was thrust into our consciousness after her infamous 2016 episode of Dr. Phil titled  "I Want To Give Up My Car-Stealing, Knife-Wielding, Twerking 13-Year Old Daughter Who Tried To Frame Me For A Crime." Wait, what? It was pretty much as insane as it sounded — the stuff that launches Tumblr-reblogged viral gifs and Jerry Springer highlight reels. As it turns out, Bhad Bhabie wasn't always so bad, and the misspelling is actually an acronym for "been hated and doubted."

According to The New York Times, Bregoli started getting in trouble when she was around 12 years old. She "transferred to an alternative school" and stopped going to class after reportedly making friends with a 15-year-old prostitute (She has her friend's name tattooed on her finger, even though they no longer talk). Bregoli might have dabbled in drug use and picked fights with her mom, but it supposedly wasn't to the extent that we saw in her daytime TV debut. The star told Complex that she "wasn't stealing cars at like, six" and "the show just wanted views."

If there was ever any evidence that Bregoli's relationship with her mom wasn't nearly as damaged as the cameras alleged, it's the fact that in 2017, she reportedly paid off her mother's $65,000 mortgage for Christmas. 

Danielle Bregoli isn't the first person to want to throw some punches on a flight — she's just a person who actually did throw a punch. Let's be honest: all of us have thought about it after being nickel-and-dimed for baggage and having someone recline their seat into our kneecaps. According to TMZ, the "Cash Me Ousside" star caught someone inside the human sardine can that is an airplane. It started when a passenger reportedly rowed with the rapper's mother because she blocked the aisle while struggling to put her carry-on in the overhead bin. Rather than offering to help Bhabie's mama, who was wearing a walking cast for a foot injury, the passenger allegedly "put her hands on her mom's throat." Bregoli punched the woman, who made a citizen's arrest (which is apparently a thing people actually do) before police showed up. They were all booted from the Spirit Airlines flight, and the entire cabin inevitably rolled its eyes at yet another delay. Though Spirit may not always get the best TripAdvisor ratings, we'd have to give that specific delay a 5/5 if only for the viral potential. 

By the way, The New York Times reports Bregoli got a bodyguard to protect her "mostly from herself" following the incident. She also name-dropped the airline in her tracks "Hi Bich" and "Roll In Peace."

Bregoli wasn't always the hardened, troubled teen throwing drinks on Iggy Azalea and being escorted out of A-list parties by security. When her mom, Barbara, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007, Bregoli spent time supporting her throughout 36 weeks of chemotherapy. In 2009, The Palm Beach Post (via the Journal-News) published a Mother's Day feature that outlined how Brigoli took care of her mama. The star reportedly "made friends with nurses and learned about the disease." She held her mother's hair and rubbed her back when the chemo made her vomit. She even rubbed aloe on her chest to "soothe the pain of radiation." By all accounts, Bregoli was a rock for her mom, who was overwhelmed with running a household while battling cancer.

"I'm everything. I pay the bills, I fix the house," Barbara said (via the Journal-News). "Some days you want to crawl in a hole. I say, 'Oh my God, this is so overwhelming.' When I hear married people say, 'I do it all by myself,' I get annoyed. They've still got a husband. It's just me and her."

According to The New York Times, Bregoli started sleeping in her mother's bed throughout her breast cancer treatment and has continued to do so. Good news: Barbara reportedly went into remission less than a year after being diagnosed.

Miss Cash Me Ousside managed to turn a small appearance on Dr. Phil into a multi-million dollar career. Though her family struggled to make ends meet after her mother's long-term disability ran out, this mother-daughter duo is sitting pretty comfortable in 2019. According to TMZ, Bregoli's landed an Atlantic record deal "worth millions" after becoming the youngest female rapper to chart on the Hot 100 with her first single "These Heaux" (for those who don't know Bhad Bhabie's dialect, that's "These Hos"). By that time, she was already reportedly charging a minimum of $30,000 per meet and greet. TMZ claims the star made so much money that when a bar in New York City offered her $5,000 to visit, she laughed at the idea.

According to People, the bankroll got even bigger for Bregoli in 2019, when she positioned herself to be the Kylie Jenner of knock-off makeup. The star signed a controversial, $900,000 endorsement deal with CopyCat Beauty, a cosmetics company whose entire business model is built around copying designer cosmetics and selling them at drugstore prices.

If Danielle Bregoli's rap career seems totally random, that's because it is. A profile in The New York Times revealed that the teenage star never really gave rapping much thought until her team was brainstorming the best way to capitalize on her viral success. When it came down to it, a film career took too long to launch, and her 15 minutes would surely be up before she got established in that industry. Social media endorsements — like the Instagram posts you see about detox tea and teeth whitener — are temporary. Rapping, as it turns out, is more foolproof. She'd hardly be the first social media star to break into music (as much as we're trying to forget Jake Paul) and she already liked to sing along in the car (which makes most of us carpool karaoke folks feel like we should have tried out for American Idol). But Bregoli was reluctant.

"I was like: 'I don't want to put these headphones on. I don't want to get in this booth,'" she told The New York Times. That feeling was short-lived. "I looked at the people in the room, and I was like: 'I'm better than you. I can do this. I'll be fine. I won't look stupid.'" Thus, Bhad Bhabie was born.

Bregoli's relationship with her father, Ira Peskowitz, is complicated. In the "Roll In Peace" remix, the "Hi Bich" rapper claims her father walked out only to come back into her life when she was famous. In a Complex interview, she also alleged her father partnered up with her best friend to try and ruin her fame. Though he wasn't very involved in her upbringing, Peskowitz tells a different side of the story, claiming he didn't walk out — he was forced.

An article in The Palm Beach Post details the struggles Peskowitz allegedly faced while trying to build a relationship with his daughter. When Bregoli was 4 months old, he reportedly "filed a petition for an injunction" against her mother for "domestic violence." She allegedly threatened to kill him before hitting him in the back with a closed fist and plastic hanger in front of their daughter. Though a judge filed a temporary injunction for protection, it wasn't long before Bregoli's mother hit back with similar allegations. In 2004, the courts awarded Bregoli's mom "sole parental decision-making responsibility" but gave Peskowitz "open and liberal" visitation rights. Her mother reportedly made visitation difficult, and despite the solutions presented by the court, a positive resolution supposedly never occurred. Peskowitz claims he still pays $1,100 a month in child support, while Bregoli's mother filed documents to remove his name from their daughter's birth certificate, according to TMZ.

When she was unwittingly thrust into the spotlight following her Dr. Phil appearance, Danielle Bregoli was better known as the "cash me ousside" girl than as Bhad Bhabie. Her mother told the TV psychologist that the phrase meant she'd "go outside and do what she has to do." Since then, it's been plastered across Tumblr pages and Walmart tees alike. In 2017, Bregoli basically asked Walmart to cash her ousside when she threatened to sue the retailer over a string of items emblazoned with her viral catch phrase. According to TMZ, she asked the retail giants to pull all the related articles of clothing, and her lawyers were looking to get a cut of sales that had already occurred. (To date, Walmart is still selling that kind of merchandise.)

Bregoli may not want retailers banking off her poetic prose, but she's apparently retired it from her lexicon. "She's not allowed to say 'cash me outside,'" her manager, Adam Kluger, told The New York Times. "No one on my team is allowed to use those words ever."

Danielle Bregoli has some pretty high-maintenance grooming habits for a teenager. Her long acrylic nails are her signature, and she's reportedly been doing them the same way since she was 10 years old (though a 10-year-old with gigantic, bedazzled tips seems kind of terrifying). The New York Times reported that Bhabie gets her nails done twice a week to maintain them, and it's serious business. A Complex interview revealed that she's not immune to having an absolute meltdown — one where she rips the plastic tips out of her bleeding nail beds — if they don't come out just right. 

She also reportedly spent $40,000 on a set of porcelain veneers. According to TMZ, she wasn't fond of the overcrowding on her bottom row of chompers, and apparently, having a ton of money saves you from suffering through years of braces like every other teen in America.

Brigoli may be old enough now to use Instagram, but the viral star isn't the one keeping up with her more than 16 million followers. After all, it's probably really hard to to type with those talons. According to The New York Times, Bhad Bhabie's Instagram account is run by her managers because she can't control herself. "I get mad, and I do dumb [expletive]," she said. "It's better off that they have it than me."

Because Bregoli has a passion for scrolling through her feed like most teen girls, the star reportedly has a private Instagram account. She's also involved in Snapchat. According to TMZ, the star was poised to break records when her Snapchat original series "Bringing Up Bhabie" saw more than 10 million unique viewers within 24 hours. Keeping up with the Kardashians reportedly only gets 1.5 million viewers an episode. (Ryan Seacrest, you may want to get in on this one.)

Danielle Bregoli took a page from Ariana Grande's book. She wanted it, so she bought it. Bhad Bhabie purchased her own Billboard cover, which ended up totally shading Lil' Wayne. According to TMZ, Bregoli's cover wasn't actually a cover, per say. It was an advertisement wrap that made it look like she was the featured artist. Lil' Wayne was truly on the cover, though his face was obscured. As it turns out, the move to hide Weezy might have actually been deliberate.

The "Hi Bich" rapper told the tabloid she bought the cover to "tell 'these f***ing old hip hop people' she's in the rap game for good." The tab guesstimated the ad cost about $45,000 — which would be less than her mom's mortgage and more than her veneers. Ultimately, it seems like this may be one of the more sound purchases from the same gal who said she was going to buy a Porsche before she could actually drive it.

After her first Dr. Phil appearance, Danielle Bregoli was shipped off to Turn-About Ranch, where she looked after a horse named Chief and learned how to not be, as her mom put it, "the Antichrist." The serenity was short-lived, and by her second stint on the show, Brigoli claimed she "made" the TV psychologist just like Oprah did. The funny part was, both of them knew she wasn't totally wrong.

Let's be real: When was the last time anything on Dr. Phil went viral? One of the biggest things to happen to the dude since then was rocking out with Good Charlotte in a bizarrely random James Corden skit in 2018 that probably should have never happened. There was eyeliner — eyeliner! Someone call Adam Lambert. In an interview with Complex, Dr. Phil owned up to the fact that Bregoli brought some unexpected relevance to his lengthy career. He called it his "moment of infamy." As for Bregoli, she told Maxim that Dr. Phil was a "bald-headed b**ch." How bow dah?

Cultural appropriation? Bhad Bhabie doesn't know her. There have been plenty of think pieces dissecting Danielle Bregoli's look and attitude — braids, acrylic nails, casual use of the wood "hood" — to determine if her shtick qualifies as cultural appropriation. Is part of her fame contingent on adopting an exaggerated portrayal of black culture rather than being, you know, some sort of stereotypical teenage white girl? It's a loaded question, but to Bregoli, the answer is simple.

"I look at that cultural appropriation s**t and I just ignore it because it's ridiculous, it really is," she told The Fader. "You cannot act a color. Do not tell me I'm acting black because I'm not. I'm acting 'urban,' or whatever you want to call it. I don't even have a name for it, I call it, 'me.'" She added, "I get braids all the time, you can't tell me I'm acting black because I braid my hair. That makes no sense whatsoever. One race does something more than another race. Honestly, Asians started tattoos. Every single race has tattoos. How come they don't tell me I'm culturally appropriating because I have a tattoo? If someone wants to do something they should just do it, as long as they're happy with it. If you're not happy with it then don't do it."

Okay, then.

Once Bhad Bhabie got her 15 minutes of fame, she was really reluctant to embrace it. In an interview with The Fader, the "These Heaux" singer admitted her instinct was to "cuss out" anyone who spoke to her and asked for a photo. "I'd be like, 'Why the f**k do you want to take a picture with me? I don't even know who the f**k you are, you're just coming up to me saying this wack a** s**t to me,'" she said.

Since then, the virulent star has stopped baring her teeth, which is ironic, considering her brand new veneers. All it took to settle down was the realization that she was actually famous. Howbow dah? Since then, Bregoli has taken quite nicely to an A-lister lifestyle, but she wants to let everyone know that she can give up her super luxe life at anytime because she totally endured, like, 13 years without it. That's practically an eternity when you're 15 years old. "If my albums sell, I'd be more than happy to [continue rapping]. But I'm not desperate to do anything," the teen told Complex. "I could go back to Boynton if I really wanted to ... I don't wanna make it seem like I wouldn't be able to survive without fame. 'Cause I did it for 13 years."