Audrey Hobert Artistfacts

February 19, 1999
Audrey Hobert was born in New York City and raised in Los Angeles, the oldest of four children. Her father is a TV writer (he was one of the developers of Scrubs), and her mother encouraged all her kids to participate in the arts, especially musical theatre. Hobert took that encouragement seriously, throwing herself into dance classes and musical theatre from a young age.
Hobert studied screenwriting at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, graduating in 2021. After returning to Los Angeles, she landed a job as a staff writer on Nickelodeon's The Really Loud House, a comedy about a preteen boy navigating life with 10 sisters. "That was the most imposter syndrome I've ever had," she told Interview magazine. "And the nature of a writers' room is so competitive because you're wanting to get your storyline in and your joke in."

When the show was cancelled, she made a hard pivot into her own music.
Hobert and pop star Gracie Abrams have been best friends since meeting in a bathroom at Abrams' fifth-grade graduation. Hobert, then a sixth grader, clocked Abrams wearing the same white high-top Converse she had worn to her own fifth-grade graduation the year before. At The Forum in Los Angeles in 2025, Abrams recalled the moment onstage with Hobert beside her: "And in that moment we knew that 10, 15 years later we'd be at the Forum."
Hobert and Abrams moved in together as roommates in Venice, California, and began co-writing songs at home. Their partnership began in earnest when a phrase spoken by a heartbroken acquaintance caught their attention; Hobert and Abrams sang it back to each other and wrote a complete song that night. That habit of writing at home - often in eight-hour sessions that might yield just two good lines - became the foundation of Hobert's entire approach to songwriting.
Hobert co-wrote seven of the 17 tracks on Abrams' chart-topping album The Secret of Us (2024), including "Risk," "Let It Happen," "I Love You, I'm Sorry," and "That's So True."

"That's So True," which Hobert also sang backing vocals on, became a global hit. "It's such an angsty, sarcastic song," Abrams told Nylon. "Audrey and I were drunk on the roof, writing it in tears, laughing. The initial lyrics were way gnarlier."
Before launching her solo career, Hobert also worked behind the camera, directing the music videos for Abrams' "Risk" and "I Love You, I'm Sorry." The self-directed streak carried over to directing the videos for her debut album, Who's the Clown?. Hobert told Billboard she has always been driven by a desire to stay in control of how she presents herself: "There was never a world in which I wasn't going to be entirely brash and bold in expressing myself."
Every one of the 12 tracks on Who's the Clown? was written or co-written by Hobert. The album's title reflects a recurring theme of self-aware vulnerability running through Hobert's songwriting - the sense of knowingly making a fool of yourself for someone and owning it completely.
Hobert's brother is the pop singer-songwriter Malcolm Todd. She co-wrote the song "Concrete" for his self-titled debut album and also directed its video.

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